O Eyes All Prayer

"The Woman's Voice" offers this up, in the poet's name, to an Iraqi girl who hovered, delicate as the flutter of the white dove, over the columns of the temples in Baalbek, where the poet lives among the ghosts of maidens and flocks of white doves.

... For God's sake, ask her... for God's sake, ask her...
O crown of Sannine,
O lily across the open plain....

O jasmine-bud... O jasmine

O grape of a cluster grown full,
turned luscious on the tongue in October....

O my wheat-ear, in the year of dearth
you rose high... and O sweet herbs

O eyes that are all prayer...
and holy days... and Palm Sundays

For whom will the loveliness remain
after her?... for whom?

The lily answered with a nod... and then
began to wink at the eglantine

— "Is it true, do you think?" He told him... "Yes indeed —
she is the loveliest of the lovely..."