Stand before Cambyses

In my modest life, this draft written in fading light,
you alone are the singular soul who can hear
even the careful fall of my footsteps
across the altar drenched in love's devotion!

You are the one—who feels the sound of all my silences,
who has never mistaken the sigh that clings
to the end of letters meant for you
as anything like farewell!
The melancholy tune my violin raises—
you are the one who has never changed the meaning
of that hidden melody!

You are my one person, the person who...
has understood a thousand times over
the dim existence where my silent dwelling waits
through a hundred years of hundred waitings—
that existence no one else has ever found!
The deep blue morning glory hiding its face
in the thicket's shadow among prayer offerings—
you found it, kept it tenderly in your heart,
arranged moments...days and nights...

Steadfast love, surrendering to the pull of lips,
could never push away the devotion
offered at its altar. Because
it believes not in literal translation, only in the spirit's rendering!
Know this—I have worshipped you not as lover
but as the deity of my very life!
There, love is present, but reverence flows even more abundantly!

No demands exist, only baskets overflowing
with respect and faith! The unshaken trust
in the corners of your eyes,
with some joy and happiness scattered there—all of them together
make the vapor of my tears
sublime and extraordinary...increasingly so.
The feeling that bloomed yellow with spring's color in your heart—
its intimate scars I still preserve with utmost care.

Write this deep in your heart, beloved...
I have—
not passion, but love;
not flesh, but reverence mixed with faith;
not desire, but peace;
not loud presence, but existence;
not blood, but death-clothed magnificence!

If you and I should meet in this lifetime,
no, we will not beg spring from any ascetic;
rather, the love that spring wind stirs to madness—
we will drench it only in the heart's moisture.
We will not run in futile parades of passion anymore,
but embrace transformation as pioneers
in love's true founding.

Do not call it...what everyone calls love,
do not call it by any mistaken name today...this heart says only!
You who sit as household deity
on an altar arranged with worship's offerings—
truly, you must not be called in their manner!

Whether any registration occurred
in government offices or on graveyard
nameplates, we know nothing of that...
but let us remember this much:
never in the urgency to live longer
will we forget that taste of self-satisfied love
that is like death itself!

Not on traditional love's canvas though...
but on the canvas of faith that cannot calculate
give and take, against the backdrop
of boundless reverence—
we will paint love's picture...will you remember?
Will you wait that long for me?

When everyone has departed
to some world drunk on the accounting of their spent years,
then with paintbrush in hand, giving the finger
to all exchange, standing before the canvas
hanging in our private world—
don't forget to wait for me...how about it?