VALÉRY LARBAUDThe Gift of Oneself
I o√er myself to everyone as a reward,
Even before you’ve deserved it.
There is something in me,
In the depths, in the center of me,
Something infinitely arid
Like the top of the highest mountains,
Something like the eye’s blind spot,
And without echo,
But which sees and hears;
A being with its own life, who yet
Lives all my life, and listens, impassive,
To the chattering of my conscience.
A being made of nothing, if that can be,
Insensitive to the body’s pain,
Not weeping when I weep,
Not laughing when I laugh,
Not blushing when I act in shame,
Not moaning when my heart is stricken;
Unmoving, not giving advice,
Seeming endlessly to say,
‘‘Here I am, caring for nothing.’’
It’s perhaps empty, as is emptiness,
But so vast that good and bad together
Don’t fill it up.
In it hatred dies for lack of air,
And the greatest love cannot come in.
So take everything I am: the meaning of these poems,
Not what you read, but what shows through despite me;
Don’t refuse, you have nothing
And wherever I go, in the whole universe,
I always meet,
Outside myself as in myself,
Emptiness that can’t be filled,
Nothingness that can’t be won.
—mary ann caws and patricia terry