The Boat's Evening

Passion and love, in the cup of boon companions, are whisperings,
and the songs of our merry night are poetry and prayer,
and our passion, in the eyelids of the star, is a world and a life,
and each of us, despairing, has his hopes brought to life by kisses —
a lip bending tender, and a mouth full of longing,
and a heart that love has bent low and then betrayed.

Night enfolded us, and in the eyelid were phantoms and misgivings,
and a trembling between our two hearts, and doubt and certainty —
her mouth, and the thirsting desire, and whispering and moaning,
and from yesterday, upon the eyelid, a springtime and enchantment;
the images of the dream stretched far into our hands —
ah, after the night, if only we knew which of us we are.

Images — from my eyes, or from my tears and my wounds? —
pouring melodies and perfume upon the wounded eyelid,
and stirring the strangled tune in the breast of the slopes;
images whose perfume love breathed into my soul and my spirit —
in vain do I forget the yearnings of my sorrows,
between doubt of their visions and my certainty.

Love plunders its visions from the dawn
and strews upon the deep the remnants of its radiance —
the images of love; and its passion stayed between its two mantles,
his lips wishing they might learn the kiss of it —
between cup and boon companions we sing,
and the forenoon and the dawn are we, and as though we—

I came back with the night to the shore, complaining of hopes,
with a nightingale in the deserted cage weeping to a nightingale,
and companions among comrades sunk down in weariness —

last night's evening had made them drunk, and the flutterings of the sail,
and the echo of the waves when the waves were bent on farewell.

The bewildered boat does not know what it glides upon —
does it sing to its sweet passion, or trifle with it?
A sweet melody drifted from the channels of its lips,
and its merry voice rings out with gladness and delight,
and it courts the smile of morning, all beauty and light.

And passion and love — how sweet are their kisses,
and the echo of the oar in the waves, and those melodies.