Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,
because the massman will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive,
what longs to be burned to death.

In the calm water of the love-nights,
where you were begotten, and you have begotten,
a strange feeling comes over you
when you see a silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught
in the obsession with the darkness,
and a desire for higher love-making
sweeps you upward.

Distance does not make you falter,
now, arriving in magic, flying,
and finally, insane for the light,
you are a butterfly, and you are gone.

And so long as you haven't experienced this:
to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest
on the dark earth.

Translated by Robert Bly
published in News of the Universe, poems of twofold consciousness, edited by Robert Bly, Sierra Club Books, 1980