Three Poems

You Are the Dearer Fragrance

Is it your fragrance, or the jasmine flower —
So that I forget my being at a window-slit
And cry out to the light: do not come near —
I held back those through whom I might see
And which young man among them bends
And this young man, in the corners of the gloom —
And I felt that the iron was beckoning
But my heart whispers to Layla
And — your pardon — you are the dearer fragrance

That moistens the corners of my sorrowing heart
The iron of the prisons runs riot within them
For this place is hostage to my moaning
The loftiness of brows and the resolve of the right hand
Abased — and what mad self-surrender!
How, do you suppose, did it revile you through suspicions
Toward me — so I hid what was in my eyes
Your fragrance — it is what dwells in my longing
Than the blossoms, than the breath of jasmine

From My Bleeding Wound

She gazes toward me, a choking grief in her gaze,
Saying: it is the cold all about her
And it plucks every warmth from her body
Forbidden to the sun, after her —
Forbidden! — that this frost should freeze
I shall spread the sorrows of my heart over her

And she complains with a frightened mouth
It passes over her with a hidden touch
And hides it in its plucking palm
And to the lightning in its snatching flash —
Her steps: the steps of the creeping melody
That she may warm herself at my bleeding wound

Do You Know the Secret?

Your eyes are horizons, and my sense is that I —
From a glance left behind upon the star, or
From what mysterious thing are your eyes — from
Do you know the secret in your eyes, or are you
Like a melody the worlds tremble at, while
O your blackened dress, wound about
Were you a full moon, that the cloud found it sweet

From a cloud lost within those eyes
From a smile that died behind the eyelids
The face of nature in the mournful evening?
Drunk on your own strange radiance?
The iron of the organ knows not what it has given
A body — as though beauty were the slave of one more beautiful
To doze upon your brow the dozing of an addict?