They went down to the gorge of the Petite Gryonne,
       in May, this was, a boy and a girl,
       when the hairs on the stem of the nettle
stand up straight, and gray-eyed the water runs,

too cold to bear for more than a moment,
       over the basalt pebbles veined with quartz,
       and in the woods a bird pleadingly iterates
its song against the constant noise of the torrent,

and they lay down not far from a mound of snow
       dumped from the bridge above during the winter,
       from the Roman arch of the bridge, like a small glacier
shawled with filth and weeping slowly away now,

a hollow melted in it like the cave where immortal Pa ...