Nocturne

Nocturne III by Silva (translated by Luis Zalamea) 

It was evening,
a night filled with perfumes, whispers, and the music of bird’ wings;
A night
when fantastic glowworms flickered in the nuptial, humid shadows,
at my side, ever so slowly, close to me, listless and silent
as if prey to premonition of the most stinging pain
that inflamed the deep secret of your fibers,
over the path filled with flowers that stretched across the plain,
you were walking;
and the full moon
in the sky, so infinite, so unfathomable, spread its light.
And your shadow,
lean and languid,
and my shadow,
by the moon’s rays silhouetted
on the path’s sorrowful gravel,
were united
and were one,
but one long and lonely shadow,
but one long and lonely shadow,
but one long and lonely shadow…
Tonight,
desolate; my soul
by your death so bitterly pained and anguished,
torn from you by time, distance and the grave
upon that infinite blackness
where our voice cannot be heard,
lone and mute,
on the path I kept on walking…
And dogs braying at the moon came to my ears,
at the pale face of the moon,
and the croaking of the frogs.
I felt cold; the same chill that in your chamber
numbed your precious cheeks, hands and brow
amidst the snow-white linens
of the funereal shroud.
It was frost out of the tomb, it was the ice of the dead,
and the chilliness  of the void…
And my shadow,
sketched out by the paleness of the moon,
walked alone
walked alone,
walked alone upon the prairie;
and your shadow, lean and graceful,
pure and languid,
as in that warm spring evening long ago,
as in that night filled with perfumes, whispers and the music of bird’ wings,
approached me and walked with mine,
approached me and walked with mine,
approached me and walked  mine… Oh embraced shadows!
Oh the shadows of the bodies mingling with the shadows of the souls!
Oh shadows that search each other in tear-filled and somber nights!

On the morning of 24 May 1896, a housemaid found Asunción Silva dead in his bed with a gun near his body; he had shot himself in the heart the night before.