Classic Poem

Are you a glass of milk, rich and cold?
Or a stream flowing with mother of pearl?

Or a white ripple of the twilight time
Sweetly crossing the face of night?

Or a jar, colored and dewy
A honey jar for all who are hungry?

Or are you a cheek of fragrant lilies
Dozing over grass and fallen leaves?

Or are you silver, lightlike and supple?
Ah, the glow of my old enchantment!

What are you? A vessel of light
A blending of stars out of the dark

Oh, kiss of lilies pouring out clear
The honey of a perfumed evening

You are a refuge and a haunt for beauty
A bouquet of lilies clasped by the sky

Your lips of light have come so close
To caressing the face of these fresh arbors

Oh pool of goodness and perfume
Sloping to the horizon, a basket of jasmine

The lovers' ferry bears them beyond
The lazy ocean and the sea of dream

On your nimble feathery wing
Strewing the path of passion with hope

Your spring spills slumber on any eye
Made sleepless by a lover's longing

You nourish those soft eyes with visions
Tilting your cup of toxic sleep

Oh, your finger, caressing wounds
Sowing songs and sprinkling kisses!

An island in the gloom, suspended
Dawnlike its propitious shade

Floating over an ambrosial stream
Flanked by magic starry shores

Light has frozen on the shore
A cradle of silk, a crystal treasure

Oh, penitence of ugliness, Oh sail
of love, colorful and finely featured

The dark's heartache, the night's regret
Oh, atonement of the storm clouds!

Melt the fragments of rays and visions
at night, immerse our roofs in silver

Shake your tender wings in space
And the colors flow from the butterfly

Thanks to you the shadows dance
And the frail lilies' cups are cooled

You wove our dreams and suckled us
With your sweet flickering flashing light

You are dawn's window when night is spent
You feed the flowers that fill the meadows


Stay as you are, a secret world
Not such a thing as a soul discerns

Spinner of poems, the last muse
In a world whose mirrors are all dimmed

What song did not flow with honey
If you were to smile your praise upon it?

Joy was granted to song by you,
You, the weighted weaving pulse

Stay beyond life, in dreams, with love
Stay with poetry, and with God above