Estrangement

Tomorrow you will ask
about a nightingale that passed this way,
its echo sorrowful,
weeping for phantoms and for hopes.

And you will inquire:
will he not come back with the spring,
bringing back the song,
freely given, from the aching heart?

Or has misery
worn out his wings and his ribs,
so that no meeting
may be hoped for, and no return was decreed?

And you will ask
about a sweet one who has no heart,
whose love is grudging
even of longing across the distance!

She roams among souls,
bestowing torment upon their tomorrow,
bestowing suns,
and the barren waste, and the mirage...

— O wonder of the roses
inquiring after the source of fragrance,
when the breath of the cold uplands
is from them, and from them the scent of the hills!

And O the wrong done to a lute,
tempted to multiply its coquetry
and to be met with prostration —
for melody, in its unbidden grace, becomes impossible...