I
There is nothing sound in him.
No living flesh upon his body.
All has been blow,
all has been wound.
Where there was skin,
ashes remain.
Where there was gaze,
a silent crack.
Where there was breath,
a spasm without air.
His heart does not beat,
it trembles.
His memory does not remember,
it moans.
His body does not fall,
it crawls.
His shadow does not follow,
it goes ahead.
II
Where else can he be struck?
What corner of his body
remains without pain?
Who can bear a heart
that never ceases to break?
Without shine,
shapeless dust,
mute flesh,
the scar of a man
forgotten by love.
Whoever sees him
draws the soul from their own eyes,
flees inward,
skirting their own abyss.
There is no beauty in him,
no light that kindles longing.
His figure repels the gaze,
his presence tears at the will.
Wrapped in contempt,
clothed in abandonment,
shod with the mud of scorn.
III
Man of sorrows,
knower of all brokenness,
dweller of torment,
martyr of weeping.
He remains...
Not by strength,
but by ruin.
His face nailed to the ground,
with no hope of anything.
Like an altar
to dread,
to forsakenness.
He was deemed destroyed.
They erased his name.
They trampled his memory.
As a shattered vessel he was born.
His very being — a failure.
They cast him out of the tomb,
like a miscarriage,
like a rotting corpse
that worms devour.
IV
The twilight,
once his joy,
turned into his terror.
And all the day
is a night
that never ends.
Fallen,
yet still he walks.
Pursued,
without raising his voice.
He carried the pain of all,
and no one looked upon him.
His body was punishment,
his stride, a dread.
And it is he,
the man who passes,
mad...
mad with love!