“In vain you beg, in vain you ache,
in vain you’ve opened your wrecked heart wide.
Perhaps in heaven the rainclouds quake
because we both have cried?

This pain of ours is without a wing.
The fainthearted cry can never fly.
Weep and pray! What god is coming
by the path of the stars up high?

Abandon yourself to the dust
and upon it fall in surrender.
Our great mother is ever so just
to every sinner who kisses her.

Within a Hell of godless emptiness
submit yourself ever more to sleep’s spell.
All is a dream, all is nothingness:
the flower of the world is the asphodel.

(Trans. Michael Shindler)”