Bliss upon you, Zeena—were the fragrance,

fresh, to drift toward it, it would beg pardon;

and, Zeena, short of you fall the morning clouds

with the clear sky, whatever rises or blooms,

and short of you the silence of butterflies at dawn,

the whisper of the evenings, the confiding of the peaks;

and short of you, O Zeena, wherever

the face of the earth takes shade among the roses.

And, Zeena, where is the fluttering of perfume

when you pass by—and the pouring of the dew;

and where, beside your grace when you smile,

is the lavender that opens at the morning;

and where, when you sigh, is a sail

that dared, for Lebanon, the horizon's unknown,

and stretched out shore upon shore,

bearing guidance to all the worlds?

And, Zeena, we never knew the daybreak

to rise so fair, so richly dewed;

nor was there ever in any mind a thought

of beauty that recedes the nearer it draws...

So your pardon—what god, do you suppose,

created you, an impossibility upon our earth,

who follows our gazes with bliss

and shuts his doors against us?

1942

... After you, the world is not colored by joy,

nor is my brow set against the brow of the sky.

It is as if this night within my ribs

had never known light, nor the color of radiance.

I ask the heart about you—in me, as in it,

is the bewilderment of silence, and the death of hope.

Where is love? O sweetness of love's day,

the day my wings were in the folds of space.

After you, April keeps no wedding,

nor does the morning spread its blaze of splendor;

as if there were a hoarseness in its throat

in which the sweetness died and the singing choked.

I see the white roads in desolation,

as though winter were living in them.

Summer 1938

O her brimming mouth, O temptation

standing since the age of Eve—

the apple bequeathed her sweetness upon

sweetness, and beguilement, and seduction.

She did not leave Paradise in her nakedness:

no, she took, in secret, certain things.

(The Perfume Flask)