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the travelinghood over his shining eyes,
the slender wand held out before this body,
the wings around his ankles lightly beating,
and in his left hand, as entrusted, her.
She, so belov'd, that from a single lyre
more mourning rose than from all womenmourners —
that a whole world of mourning rose, wherein
all things were once more present：wood and vale
and road and hamlet, field and stream and beast —
and that around this world of mourning turned,
even as around the other earth, a sun
and a whole silent heaven full of stars,
a heaven of mourning with disfigured stars —
she, so beloved.
But hand in hand now with that god she walked,
her paces circumscribed by lengthy shroudings,
uncertain, gentle, and without impatience.
Wrapt in herself, like one whose time is near,
she thought not of the man who went before them,
nor of the road ascending into life.
Wrapt in herself she wandered. And her deadness
was filling her like fullness.
Full as a fruit with sweetness and with darkness
was she with her great death, which was so new
that for the time she could take nothing in.
She had attained a new virginity
and was intangible; her sex had closed
like a young flower at the approach of evening,
and her pale hands had grown so disaccustomed
to being a wife that even the slim god's
endlessly gentle contact as he led her
disturbed her like a too great intimacy.
Even now she was no longer that blond woman
who'd sometimes echoed in the poet's poems,
no longer the broad couch's scent and island,
nor yonder man's possession any longer.
She was already loosened like long hair,
and given far and wide like fallen rain,
and dealt out like a manifold supply.
She was already root.
And when, abruptly,
the god had halted her and, with an anguished
outcry, outspoke the word：He has turned round！ —
she took in nothing, and said softly：Who？
But in the distance, dark in the bright exit,