The Green Tent

Wave your beauty at the wedding of the coming spring,
scatter gladness and festivals about the brook,
and sip, with roses and perfumes, the face of hope.

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Sow enchantment and dreams along the path of youth
before the hillside grows sorrowful and the knolls turn somber,
and oncoming old age walls in the phantoms of the mist.

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For was youth ever, my dark one, anything but wishes,
and the snatching of sweet chances from the miserliness of time?
So make of it an oasis for souls — confidences and songs.

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Would that your green tent had been within my ribs,
and that, instead of the dews, O bud, my tears had watered you.

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O wine, how you have drugged the nerves of the hills;
the grape-clusters and the eyelids of the vines grew drunk on you
before the cup and the embraces of the shadows engulfed you.

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Your eye wakened buried dreams within my soul,
in the days when our precious nights were the world's joy,
and our songs upon the horizon were calm and stillness.

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You raised up the firstborn of my tremblings and my dreams with your figure,
with your two radiant eyes and in the glance of your cheek,
and with the colors of playful youth in the folds of your gown.

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O you who wake in me, in gray old age, the dreams of youth,
O you who halt my sun in its slidings toward setting,
O backward glance of hope fleeing from this dust —

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What morning portioned out its light between your cheeks and your mouth?
What night planted darkness in rivers through your hair?
What garden brought forth apples, perfumed, upon your breast?

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O bud, O firstborn of the ardors of spring