Sometimes she is like the torrent that hurtles down from the mountain.

Impetuous, irresistible, rolling like a wrathful wave,

Which threatens to tear to pieces the bridges raised to span it.

Sometime she is like a quiet, solitary pool,

Whose sparkling waters invite the timid girls to bathe…

If my muse is not dressed in the latest style,

She is certainly not a creature of dreams, sexless,

Swaddled in a loose dress, endowed with a pair of diaphanous wings,

She is a woman:

Capricious, curious, rebellious, willful, sentimental, frightening;

Whose patience and fortitude are often as solid as rock,

But on which you should not rely on unreservedly.

For it is precisely when you conjure her most insistently that she is slower to appear;

While she, she will not be kept waiting.

I know that her language is not always the most refined;

She stamps her feet. Her voice hisses, hoarse and halting;

Tousled, tragic, she gives vent to fiery accents.

Oftentimes, too, her words are a soft murmur, pleasant as fresh honey;

They flow, captivating, intoxicating, like sweet wine…

She is not afraid to show herself without a veil, stripped of ornaments;

She is not ashamed of her nudity,

My muse.