Bewildered

Drowsy-eyed, dark of skin,
bewildered by the world, and bewildering;
in him there are smiles for hopes,
and for sorrows, more.
Whenever I gazed at him
to fix a color, it changed;
and he wounded the young, free spirit
with that dust-covered face,
with that bewildered, weary stillness,
with that scattered glance.

A tenderness for him stirred me,
took hold of me, and reigned;
the bliss of a lifetime is hours
of tenderness freely chosen.
And behold, in his eyes
a hope that is folded up and spread out;
it is the light of the guiding shore
gazing from the distances —
it never dimmed but to appear
brighter, gleaming with radiance.

Everything in him is poetry's
choicest, in colors, and its wellspring:
his flowing hair
is strings for the lyres of Abqar;
inspiration plays upon it,
and reason wakes and grows drunk;
and the waist sways...
oh, that waist — how wasting, how slender!

In his confiding whisper he is a secret,
and of that secret I know best;
so remember, you, a beautiful pledge —
wretched is the one who does not remember.