Echo from the Styx

Notes

Now, restless serpent,
coiling in secret signs,
lost myself along malign
trails of my thought.
Prisoner of a loss
that grows on an ancient grief,
black imperious river,
water of the drowned, you steal,
a cry downstream, the memory
of dead hopes of light.

Salvador Espriu
(translated from the Catalan by Louis J. Rodrigues)
© Carcanet