Olga Bergholz
Oh don’t look back...

Oh don’t look back
at that ice
             at that dark;
there, waiting greedily
             for you is a look
that will demand an answer.

I looked back today. And suddenly,
I saw him — alive and with living eyes,
looking at me out of the ice,
my one and only, for all time.

I hadn’t known it was like that;
I’d thought I lived and breathed another.
But Oh, my joy, my dream, my death,
I only live beneath your gaze.

I have been faithful to him alone;
in that alone I have done right:
to all the living, I’m his wife;
to you and me — your widow.

Translated by Robert Chandler