"Darkness Spoken Like Orpheus I play death on the strings of life, and to the beauty of the Earth and your eyes, which govern heaven, I can only speak of darkness. Don't forget that you also, suddenly, on that morning when your camp was still damp with dew, and a carnation slept on your heart, you saw the dark stream race past you. The string of silence taut on the pulse of blood, I grasped your beating heart. Your curls were transformed into the shadow hair of night, black flakes of darkness buried your face. And I don't belong to you. Both of us mourn now. But like Orpheus I know life on the strings of death, deepening the blue of your forever closed eye. *"

- Ingeborg Bachmann