My soul is like a well of dead, deep water
in whose solemn, imperturbable peace the days
go by, stilling their worldly murmurs
in the silence curdled in the dead hollows.

Down there the water shows its agonized brightness:
soft iridescence fermenting in shadow,
lymphs which coagulate in long black slime
and exhale this bloodless blue phosphorescence.

My soul is like a well. The sleeping landscape
darkly forms and disintegrates in the water,
and down below, deep down, perhaps a thousand years past,
an hidden misanthropic frog is dreaming.

Sometimes at the distant influx of the moon
the well takes on a vague legendary spell:
the frog's deep croaking echoes in the water,
filled with a remote sense of eternity.