Avowal

What avowal, what echo of songs
do you long to have poured out from my wine-jars?

What color do your two eyes crave?
For you I shall gather it from the radiance of colors!

And desire the melody—I shall invent you a melody
that scatters warmth across the whole reach of its ringing...

My heart is brimful of the breathings of love;
how their stifling has grieved the heart, and grieved me.

I ask poetry to speak them out, and it falters,
falling short of pouring forth the longings and the tenderness.

For you there are, in my soul, tales of love,
of ardor, of yearning, and of hopes;

and in my breast, heaps of an ancient passion
whose like no pair of lips has ever sung;

and in my eyes there is, of your beauty, a kohl
that plants light in the visions of my lids.