All that I am hangs by a thread tonight
as I wait for her whom no one can command.
Whatever I cherish most–youth, freedom, glory–
fades before her who bears the flute in her hand.

And look! she comes. . .she tosses back her veil,
staring me down, serene and pitiless.
“Are you the one,” I ask, “whom Dante heard dictate
the lines of his Inferno?” She answers: “Yes.”

translated by Stanley Kunitz with Max Hayward