The Poems - (Engish transations by RAE DALVEN.)

Body, Remember . . .

Body remember, not only how much you were loved,
not only the beds on which you lay,
but also those desires for you
that glowed plainly in the eyes,
and trembled in the voice - and some
chance obstacle made futile.
Now that all of them belong to the past,
it almost seems as if you had yielded
to those desires - how they glowed,
remember, in the eyes gazing at you;
how they trembled in the voice, for you, remember, body.

For Them To Come

One candle is enough. It's dim light
is more appropriate , it will will be kindlier
when Shadows come, the Shadows of Love.

One candle is enough. Tonight the room
must not have too much light. Immersed entirely in revery
and in suggestion, and in the low light ­
Thus deep in revery I will dream a vision so
that Shadows may come, the Shadows of love .

Candles

The days of our future stand before us
like a row of little lighted candles ­
golden, warm and lively little candles.

The days gone by remain behind us
in a mournful line of burnt-out candles;
the nearest ones are still smoking,
cold candles, melted and bent.

I do not want to look at them; their form saddens me,
and it saddens me to recall their first light.
I look ahead at my lighted candles.

I do not want to turn back, lest I see and shudder ­
how quickly the sombre line lenghthens,
how quickly the burnt-out candles multiply.

In The Monotonous Village

In the monotonous village where he works ­
an employee in a general store;
so very young - where he still has to wait
for another two or three months to pass,
another two or three months for business to slacken a bit ,
so that he may dash to town and fling himself
at once into activity and amusement;
in the monotonous village where he waits ­
lovelorn he fell on his bed tonight,
all his youth ablaze with desire of the flesh,
all his beautiful youth in a beautiful intensity.
And in his sleep, voluptuousness came to him;
In his sleep he sees and possesses the figure and flesh he craved.. . .

At The Cafe Entrance

Something they said beside me directed
my attention toward the café entrance.
And I saw the beautiful body that looked
as if Eros had made it from its consummate experience ­
joyfully modeling its symmetrical limbs;
heightening sculpturally its stature;
modeling the face with emotion
and imparting by the touch of his hands
a feeling on the brow, on the eyes, on the lips.

Return

Return often and take me,
beloved sensation, return and take me -
when the memory of the body awakens,
and old desire again runs through the blood;
when the lips and the skin remember,
and the hands feel as if they touch again.

Return often and take me at night,
when the lips and the skin remember. . .

Days of 1903

I never found them again ­
those things so speedily lost. . .
the poetic eyes, the pallid face . . .
in the dusk of the road. . .

I never found them again ­
those quite haphazardly acquired,
that I gave up so lightly;
and later in agony I craved.
The poetic eyes, the pallid face,
I never found those lips again.

In Despair

He has lost him completely. And now he is seeking
in the lips of every new lover
the lips of his beloved; in the embrace
of every new lover he seeks to be deluded
that he is the same lad, that it is to him he is yielding.

He has lost him completely, as if he had never been at all.
For he wanted - so he said ­ he wanted to be saved
from the stigmatised, the sick sensual delight;
from the stigmatised, sensual delight of shame.
There was still time - as he said - to be saved.

He has lost him completely, as if he had never been at all.
In his imagination, in his delusions,
on the lips of others it is his lips he is seeking;
he is longing to feel again the love he has known.

Supplication

The sea took a sailor to its deep -
His mother, unsuspecting, goes to light

a tall candle before the Virgin Mary
for his speedy return and for fine weather ­

and always she cocks her ear to windward.
But while she prays and implores,

the Icon listens, solemn and sad, knowing well
that the son she expects will no longer return.

Voices

Ideal and dearly beloved voices
of those who are dead, or of those
who are lost to us like the dead.

Sometimes they speak to us in our dreams;
sometimes in thought the mind hears them.

And for a moment with their echo other echoes
return from the first poetry of our lives ­
like music that extinguishes the far-off night.

Very Seldom

He is an old man. Worn out and stooped,
maimed by the years, and by abuses.,
with slow step he crosses the narrow street .
And yet as he enters his door to hide
his wretchedness and his old age, he meditates
on the share he still has of youth.

Now young people recite his verses.
In their lively eyes his fancies pass.
Their sound, voluptuous minds,
their shapely, firm flesh
are stirred by his expression of beauty.

Melancholy of Jason, Son of Cleander
( Poet in Commagene; a.d. 595 )

The growing old of my body and face
is a wound from a hideous knife.
I no longer have any endurance.
I take refuge in you, Art of Poetry,
who know something about drugs
and attempts to numb suffering, in Imagination and Word.

It is a wound from a hideous knife.-
Fetch your drugs, Art of Poetry,
that make one unaware - for awhile - of the wound. ­

At the Foot of The House

Yesterday while walking in an outlying
neighborhood , I passed below the house
I used to frequent when I was very young.
There love with his marvelous strength
had possessed my body.

And yesterday
as I passed by along the old road,
the shops, the sidewalks, the stones,
walls, balconies and windows
were made beautiful at once by the enchantment of love;
nothing unbeautiful remained there.

And as I stood there, and looked at the door,
and stood, and lingered below the house,
all of my being gave back
the delightful stored-up sensual emotion.

Far Off

I should like to relate this memory . . .
But it is so faded now . . . scarcely anything is left ­
Because it lies far off, in the years of my early manhood.

A skin as if made of jasmine . . .
that night in August ­ was it August? ­ that night . . .
I can just barely remember the eyes; they were, I think, blue . . .
Ah yes, blue; a sapphire blue.

When They Are Roused

Try to guard them, poet,
however few there are that can be kept.
The visions of your loving.

Set them, half hidden in your phrases.
Try to sustain them, poet,
when they are roused in your brain
at night, or in the glare of noon.