Soul & Body

‘disjoining the siblings, once going together, /

body and soul’

‘the sorrowing soul

calls out with cold voice’

‘O full of earth, entirely decayed,

the very likeness of loam!’

‘How little you thought, when you passed onwards, / into every terrifying hunger, how you must become /

a banquet-table for vermin’

‘I dwelt within you. I never could exist without you, /

enclosed in flesh, and your criminal desires / crushed me’

‘Ever I begged /

miserably for our parting’

‘your criminal desires […]

strengthened by me / you never preserved me from the compulsion’

‘I must nevertheless seek you perforce nightly, /

agonized by our sins’

‘then will the Lord himself […] wish to hear their deeds, from the voice of their mouths /

[…] as recompense for his wounds’

‘Its head cleaved open, hands fallen apart, / jaws gaping, throat torn apart /

sinews sucked out, neck gnawed up’

‘and he made room for others

to rummage’