Caresses

Translation of a poem by Stefan Zweig

I love each first anxious caress,

Still part question and already part trust,

Because after them more hours press,

Like pillars into our lives they thrust.

They are the scent of the briefest flower’s palpation,

A quick glance, a smile, a gentle hand –

They crackle like red sparks of seduction

And plunge like a fire ditch into night’s black band.

Playfully given, they are strangely sweet,

Soft, inadvertent and quietly ruffled,

Like trees trembling in a spring breeze

Ready to break them in its cruel fist’s grapple.

the-sphinx-or-the-caresses-1896

The Sphinx or The Caresses – Fernand Khnopff