Xavier Villaurrutia (1903-1950)

Fear Nocturne

Everything at night lives a secret doubt:
silence and noise, time and place.
Motionless sleepers or wide-awake somnambulists,
we are helpless against secret anxiety.
And it is not enough to close our eyes in the darkness
or sink them in sleep to see no more,        
for in the hard darkness and in the cavern of sleep
the same nocturnal light still keeps us awake.
Then, with the tread of an awake sleeper,
aimless and pointless we begin to walk.
Night pours over us its mystery,
and something tells that us to die is to awake.
And who among the shadows of a deserted street,
in the wall, a livid mirror of solitude,
one has not seen coming and going to his encounter
and has not felt fear, pain, mortal doubt?
The fear of being nothing but an empty body
that someone, myself or any other, can occupy,
and the pain of being outside oneself, alive,
and the doubt of being or not being real.