Listen, passer-by. Since you're a
stranger, I can tell you these things.
Don't be afraid of my crazed eyes.
See that mountain? It's Latmos.
I've climbed it
so many times in the night,
when it was darker,
and I've waited for dawn
among its beech trees.
Yet I feel I've never touched it.
Who can say he's ever touched
what he passes?
Sometimes I think we're
like the wind
that runs impalpably. Or like the
dreams of someone sleeping.
Do you like, stranger,
to sleep during the day?
I sleep in any case,
when I'm sleepy and fall down.
And in your sleep does it happen to
you who walk the roads
to listen to the rustling wind
and the birds,
the ponds, the buzzing,
the voice of the water?
Don't you feel, while sleeping,
that you're never alone?
Friend, I wouldn't know.
I've always lived alone.
O stranger, I no longer find
peace in sleep.
I believe I've slept forever,
yet I know
that it's not true. In my bed...
now I keep an ear out
and I'm ready to jump.
And I've these eyes, these eyes,
like someone staring into the dark.
I feel I've always
lived like this.
Have you been missing someone?
''Someone''? O stranger,
do you believe
that we are mortals?
Someone you love is dead?
Not ''someone.''
Stranger, when I climb the Latmos
I am no longer a mortal.
I know I'm not dreaming,
I haven't slept in so long. 
That night I was there and waited for her.
Who was to come?
Let's not say her name.
Let's not. She has no name.
Or she has many, I know.
Man companion,
do you know the horror
of the forest when a
nocturnal clearing opens up?
Or don't you?
When you think at night of the clearing
you saw and crossed by day, and there...
there's a flower, a berry you know,
swaying in the wind...
and this berry, this flower, is
a wild, untouchable, deadly thing,
It's among all the wild things.
Do you understand?
A flower that's like a wild beast?
Companion, have you ever watched
with fright and desire
the nature of a she-wolf,
a doe, a snake?
You mean
the sex of the living beast?
Yes, but that's not enough.
Have you ever known...
a person who was many things in one,
who carried them with her
so that her every gesture,
every thought you form of her
contains an infinity of things
of your earth and your sky,
and contains words, memories,
days gone by you'll never know,
future days,
certainties
and another earth
and another sky
which is not yours to possess.
I've heard of this.
O stranger, and what if this person
is the beast, the wild thing,
the untouchable nature which has no name?
You speak of terrible things.
But that's not enough.
Listen, if you walk the roads,
you know that the earth is all
full of the divine and the terrible,
and if I speak to you,
it's because, as wayfarers and strangers,
we too are a bit divine.
Certainly, I've seen many things.
And some of them are terrible.
But you needn't go far.
Maybe it'll help if I tell you
that the immortals know
the path to your hearth.
So you do know,
and can believe me.
I was sleeping one night on the Latmos...
It was night-
I'd been wandering late.
I was sleeping seated against a trunk.
I woke up under the moon.
In my dream I'd shivered thinking
I was there, in the clearing.
And I saw her.
I saw her looking at me,
with those slightly sidelong eyes,
eyes steady, transparent, big within.
I didn't know it then, nor the next day,
but I was already her thing,
caught in the circle of her eyes,
in the space she occupied,
of the clearing, of the mountain.
She smiled at me guardedly.
I said ''Lady'' to her.
she was frowning,
like a little wild girl,
It was as if she'd understood.
I was stupefied
and, stretching out her hand,
she touched my hair.
She almost touched me with hesitation
She smiled, an incredible smile,
mortal.
I nearly fell prostrate.
I thought of all her names.
"You must never wake up."
she says to me.
"You mustn't move.
I'll come and see you again."
And she went away
through the clearing.
When the light came
a slightly livid, covered light
I looked from on high onto the plain
and understood that never more...
I would live among men.
I was no more one of them.
I was waiting for the night.
Incredible things you tell me,
Endymion. Incredible in that
since probably
you went back to the mountain,
you live and walk still,
and the wild one
the lady of the names,
hasn't yet made you hers.
I am hers, stranger.
I mean, don't you know
the story of the shepherd
torn to pieces by dogs,
the indiscreet one, the stag-man?
O stranger, I know everything about her.
Because we've talked and talked
and I was pretending to be asleep,
always,
every night,
and I didn't touch her hand
just as one doesn't touch the lioness
or the green water of the pond,
or the thing that is most ours,
that we carry in our heart.
Listen. She's standing in front of me.
A thin girl, not smiling, watching me.
And the big, transparent eyes,
have seen other things.
In these eyes there is
the berry and the beast,
there's howling, death,
a cruel tangle.
I know of blood spilled, flesh rent,
voracious earth, solitude.
For her, the wild one
is solitude.
For her the wild beast is solitude.
His caress is the caress we make...
to the dog or the tree trunk.
But, stranger,
she looks at me, looks at me.
She's a thin girl, like maybe
you've seen in your village.
Of your life as a man, Endymion,
you've not spoken?
Stranger, you know terrible things,
and you don't know
that the wild and the divine
efface the man?
When you climb the Latmos
you're not mortal anymore, I know that.
But the immortals...
know how to be alone. 
And you don't want the solitude.
What then did you ask of her?
That she smile again. And this time
to be blood spilled in front of her,
to be flesh in her dog's mouth.
And what did she tell you?
''You must never wake up,''
she told me.
O mortal, the day you're actually
awake you'll know why,
she spared you her smile.
I know why now,
O stranger,
you who speak like a god.
The divine and the terrible run over
the earth, and we walk the roads.
You said so yourself.
O wayfaring god,
her sweetness is like the daybreak,
its earth and sky revealed.
And it is divine. But for others
for things and beasts,
she the wild one has a short laugh,
a commandment that annihilates.
And no one has ever
touched her knee.
Endymion, resign yourself in your
mortal heart. Neither god nor man
has touched her. Her voice
which is raucous and maternal
is all the wild one can give you.
Yet...
As long as that mountain exists
I'll have no peace in sleep.
Everyone has the sleep he has,
Endymion. And your sleep
is infinite with voices and screams
with earth and heaven and days.
Sleep with courage.
You have no other wealth.
The wild solitude is yours. Love it.
Love it as she loves it.
And now, Endymion, I leave you.
You'll see her tonight.
O wayfaring god, I thank you.
Farewell. But you mustn't
wake up anymore, remember.
