Let others say whatever they wish,
but why didn’t you say: ‘Love is never a sin’?
Why didn’t you say standing for a while in the court
of love: ‘The man who loves may become a killer,
a fire, a storm or a tidal surge;
if you afford the power, either kill him or exile
but never call him a sinner’?

Could Abel love you more than I do, Aclima?
Was Abel more manly, more war-loving,
more love-mongering?
Was Abel more destitute to the world of love
than I?

It is I who only for you
stroke his brother’s head into pieces
like a glass broken at a single blow.
With the ceaseless rain of blood,
I made the cornfield stained and damp.
And only for your sake, Aclima,
I invited the cruel Death
to the eternal din of life.

What is my fault, tell me-
why did you get so lucrative
like the alluring grapes?
Why did you get so irresistibly delicious
like the colorful mangoes ripe to the core?
Why did you start- by smearing the fire of beauty
on lips and cheeks- heating, as the oven, the fry-pan
of my youth and baking the bread of heart so severely?
For your sake, I ventured to disobey
the Lord of darkness and light;
yet how strangely you rejected me
by calling me heartless!
For your sake, I rudely invented
the festival of killing on earth;
still how surprisingly you flung me
into the dustbin of despair!

Oh Aclima, is love then a sin?
Is love a fruit of the forbidden tree?