Translation of Francisco de Quevedo’s “Amor constante más allá de la muerte.”
Perhaps the last shade that will take me
one white day may close my eyes,
and time, acquiescing to its pressing desire
may unmoor this soul of mine;
but it won’t leave love’s memory there
where it burned on that far shore, the other side:
my flame knows how to brave icy water
and ignore laws that pretend to confine.
A soul whose prison no less than divine has been,
veins that entertained the spread of so much fire,
marrow that smoldered gloriously in its pyre—