PSYCHE

What leaden caves descend behind your face?
Blind skeletons, glittering rocks, harsh torrents
old and lethal burrow in that deep.

What delicate birches decorate your plains?
The quickest of birds, fat amiable bees
and waving grasses flourish in that land.

What muscular beast explores the sombre woods,
padding among the heaving roots of trees
in search of flesh to penetrate or tear?

What easy-moving perfumes, wafting low,
lift up the obvious on seductive clouds,
and make your tongue itself taste amber-sweet?

This is the planet of the other worlds.
Here matted growths, which think that they cohere,
entangle, stagger and disintegrate;
while Hell and Heaven, dodging in and out,
deceive each generation's opening eyes
with promises of time and permanence.