Talk of the Heart — The Lost Melody!

"Wail, you storms, and dance; whistle in the ears, and beat upon the doors as you please — for on this night there is none more mad than you, none more violent... except my heart!"

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"Sway, you tall trees behind my window, and toss loose your hair like a jinn-maiden of the jungles forsaken by her lover — for in this fearsome rage of yours there is nothing but a picture... of certain states of my heart!"

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"And the spray of snow on the peaks of our mountains — the wind scatters it wherever it will... and the moment it lets droop its two transparent wings, worn out with weariness, the mountain yawns, wrapped beneath a pure white mantle... And what do I care if the slopes wrestle one another, seared by yellow jealousy, so long as you are like this mountain in its whiteness and its purity?..."

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... Pictures, leaping about in my imagination, on this day of yours, my heart — the day life uttered you forth out of nothingness and you became a reality possessed of being, pulsing with warmth and blood, its two mantles brimming with hopes...

And whenever a new remembrance of that day of yours came back to us, I would pass my night with raging nerves and drowned eyes, and I would feel you folded in upon yourself in pride, like a snail in a far-off sea: whenever it fancies that a hand is tempting it, it slips out of sight, swift and light, and shuts fast against it a sealed barrier!

What awakening knocked at your door today? Or has some feather of light brushed your walls with its radiance, so that a trace of it still clings to you?!

I asked you, my heart... How long shall this hermit's life tyrannize over you, so that you will not join people in their merriment and loose your throat in plaintive song?

How long shall this shrinking from savory food and from the good things of life tyrannize over you?

I see you brooding on the edge of revolt, like a lion gathering himself to spring... and I glimpse upon your interlaced lashes the shadow of something that resembles happiness!

Is there some new glad tiding?...

I have adjured you, my heart: will you not cast off your tattered, worn-out garment, and tighten the strings of your lyre, that together we may play and sing... your lost melody?!

February 1, 1953