To Life, with Love

Twilight
...................
Long forgotten, buried beneath a whisper of dust,
Beloved features, you stand before me again—
And in that hour of spiritual anguish, we suddenly breathed back to life
All that the soul had long surrendered to oblivion.


Burning with shame's fierce flame, our eyes meet once more—
In them, guilelessness, hope, and love,
And words of sincerity, faded as old patterns,
Flow from my heart to the pulse that drives blood.


And I spoke to a treacherous whisper,
As if something in this world existed outside of love!
I thrust away the hand that once wrote you,
Condemned myself to endless separation,
And with frost settling in my chest, I turned toward a long journey.


Evening
.............................
Why, with that same trembling smile,
Do you whisper of love to me, searching my eyes?
The soul cannot resurrect; no voice of forgiveness
Will wash away these lines or the burning tear...


If you love as I do—boundlessly,
If you live in love and breathe it,
Place your hand upon my chest without thinking:
You will feel the hearts beating beneath.


Oh, do not count them! Within them, by enchantment's power,
Each throb is filled with you alone;
So in a spring behind a stream of healing
Spins the hot moisture in its flow.


Drink, surrender to these moments of bliss,
Let rapture's thrill embrace your whole being;
Drink—and do not ask with that searching gaze
When the heart will exhaust itself, when all will grow cold.


Night
..............................
Night blazed. The moon flooded the gardens.
Its rays lay at our feet in the dark room.
The piano stood open, its strings trembling
Like our hearts beneath your song.


You sang until dawn, exhausted with tears,
That you alone are love, that no other love exists—
And oh, how I longed to live so that without ceasing the sound,
I would love you, hold you, and weep over you.


And many years have passed, languid and hollow,
Yet in the silence of night I hear your voice again,
And it rises, as then, in the sighs of these resonant notes,
That you alone are all of life, that you alone are—love.


That there is no resentment toward fate, toward destiny,
And life has no end, no other purpose,
Save this: to believe in those sobbing sounds,
The cries and whispers of a wailing heart's flowers.