A dozen girls’ chemises drying on a line, floral lace at the breast like rose windows in a Gothic cathedral.

Lord, shield Thou me from all evil.

A dozen girls’ chemises, that’s love, innocent girls’ games on a sunlit lawn, the thirteenth, a man’s shirt, that’s marriage, ending in adultery and a pistol shot.

The wind that’s streaming through the chemises, that’s love, our earth embraced by its sweet breezes: a dozen airy bodies.

Those dozen girls made of light air are dancing on the green lawn, gently the wind is modelling their bodies, breasts, hips, a dimple on the belly there -- open fast, oh my eyes.

Not wishing to disturb their dance I softly slipped under the chemises’ knees, and when any of them fell I greedily inhaled it through my teeth and bit its breast.

Love, which we inhale and feed on, disenchanted, love that our dreams are keyed on, love, that dogs our rise and fall: nothing yet the sum of all.

In our all-electric age nightclubs not christenings are the rage and love is pumped into our tyres. My sinful Magdalen, don’t cry: Romantic love has spent its fires. Faith, motorbikes, and hope.

Translated from Czech by Edward Osers

You ask me about that country whose details now escape me, I don't remember its geography, nothing of its history. And should I visit it in memory, It would be as I would a past lover, After years, for a night, no longer restless with passion, With no fear of regret. I have reached that age when one visits the heart merely as a courtesy.

Translated by Agha Shahid Ali

Heart be kind and sign the release As the trees their loss approve. Learn as leaves must learn to fall Out of danger, out of love.

What belongs to frost and thaw Sullen winter will not harm. What belongs to wind and rain Is out of danger from the storm.

Jealous passion, cruel need Betray the heart they feed upon. But what belongs to earth and death Is out of danger from the sun.

I was cruel, I was wrong - Hard to say and hard to know. You do not belong to me. You are out of danger now -

Out of danger from the wind, Out of danger from the wave, Out of danger from the heart Falling, falling out of love.