My Life Is a Memory

Rafael Arévalo Martínez

translated from the Spanish by William George Williams When I met her I loved myself. It was she who had my best singing, she who set flame to my obscure youth, she who raised my eyes toward heaven. Her love moistened me, it was an essence. I folded my heart like a handkerchief  and after I turned the key on my existence. And thus it perfumes my soul with a distant and subtle poetry.