What I once hated, I now love,
Since love conquered me
By other means than love, mysteriously,
As when the eye is forced to see
Itself in another’s eye
And succumbs to what belongs to that eye’s body.
Previously, I thought a face ugly,
And now, joyously: “why, why, why?”
I know too many things should not be thought beautiful,
Lest my judgement be destroyed—
But now I am over you, and I am overjoyed.
Yours was a superficial beauty, the kind everyone sees;
But now I love the many’s incongruities.
I love what was impossible to love before.
Love was once you. Now, it is more.
Love is focused on one person because one person is what we are,
But infinite beauty reached me from afar
Through an atmosphere that once held one star
And now holds many.
I am wealthy, for I once held one penny,
One—you—who I held as gold in my heart.
To love, I had to hate, having died by a single dart.
