Today's poem brings this short series to an end

My other poetry blogs are continuing with a poem added every day
The Thomas Hardy Poetry Collection
and
My Poetry Digest

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Resignation

As a child, I dreamt of the Koh-i-Noor,
Persian and Papal richness, sumptuous,
Heliogabalus, Sardanapalus!
My desire conjured, where the gold roofs soar,

To music’s strains, where fragrances entice,
Endless harems, bodily paradise!
Calmer these days and yet no less ardent,
Knowing life, how one’s obliged to be,

I’m forced to curb such lovely folly,
And yet not yield to too great an extent.
So be it, if greatness eludes intent,

Yet down with the nice, and the ordinary!
I always hated a woman merely pretty,
Rhyme that’s assonant, the friend who’s prudent!

-o0o-

Let's Dance a Jig

Let’s dance a jig!

I loved, above all, her pretty eyes

Brighter than stars in the skies,

I loved her malicious eyes likewise.

Let’s dance a jig!

She for sure, she knew the art

Of breaking a poor lover’s heart,

How charmingly she played the part.

Let’s dance a jig!

But I find it even better

That kiss of her mouth in flower

Now, in my heart, she’s a dead letter.

Let’s dance a jig!

I recall, oh I recall

The hours, the words we let fall,

And this the very best of all.

Let’s dance a jig!

-o0o-

A Poor Young Shepherd

I’m afraid of a kiss

Like the kiss of a bee.

I suffer like this

And wake endlessly.

I’m afraid of a kiss!

Yet I love Kate

And her sweet gaze.

She’s delicate

With a long pale face.

Oh! How I love Kate!

It’s Saint Valentine’s Day!

I must, I don’t dare

Tomorrow, they say…

It’s a dreadful affair

Is Saint Valentine’s Day!

She’s promised to me,

Fortuitously!

But the difficulty

For a lover, poor he,

With his darling to be!

-o0o-

Green

Here are the fruits, the flowers, the leaves, the wands,

Here my heart that beats only for your sighs.

Shatter them not with your snow-white hands,

Let my poor gifts be pleasing to your eyes.

I come to you, still covered with dew, you see,

Dew that the dawn wind froze here on my face.

Let my weariness lie down at your feet,

And dream of the dear moments that shed grace.

Let my head loll here on your young breast

Still ringing with your last kisses blessed,

Allow this departure of the great tempest,

And let me sleep now, a little, while you rest.

-o0o-

Is it not so?

Is it not so? Despite the fools, the malevolent

Those who’ll never fail to envy our happiness,

We will sometimes be proud and forever indulgent.

Is it not so? We’ll go, gaily, slowly, on the modest

Road that reveals to us Hope smiling,

Whether we’re seen or ignored, ever careless.

Enclosed by love as in a dark wood, exhaling

Our two hearts, their peaceful tenderness,

Will be two nightingales in the dusk singing.

As for the World, let it be angered by us,

Or tender, what can its gestures signify?

Let it make us a target, or let it caress us.

Bound by the strongest and dearest tie,

And more, possessing adamantine armour,

We’ll smile and fear nothing that meets the eye.

Un-preoccupied with whatever Fate destines for

Us, marching onwards and in step we’ll go,

Hand in hand, with the childlike souls, what’s more,

Of those whose love is untainted, is it not so?

-o0o-

The Piano Kissed . . .

"Joyous notes, a sounding harpsichord’s intrusion."

Pétrus Borel

The piano kissed by a delicate hand

Gleams distantly in rose-grey evening

While with a wingtips’ weightless sound

A fine old tune, so fragile, charming

Roams discreetly, almost trembling,

Through the chamber She’s long perfumed.

What is this sudden cradle song

That gradually lulls my poor being?

What do you want of me, playful one?

What do you wish, slight vague burden

Drifting now, dying, towards the window

Opening a little on a patch of garden?

-o0o-

Sentimental Conversation

In the lonely old park’s frozen glass

Two dark shadows lately passed.

Their lips were slack, eyes were blurred,

The words they spoke scarcely heard.

In the lonely old park’s frozen glass

Two spectral forms invoked the past.

‘Do you recall our former ecstasies?’

‘Why would you have me rake up memories?’

‘Does your heart still beat at my name alone?’

‘Is it always my soul you see in dream?’ – ‘Ah, no’.

‘Oh the lovely days of unspeakable mystery,

When our mouths met!’ – ‘Ah yes, maybe.’

‘How blue it was, the sky, how high our hopes!’

‘Hope fled, conquered, along the dark slopes.’

So they walked there, among the wild herbs,

And the night alone listened to their words.

-o0o-

Cupid Overthrown

Last night’s wind saw Cupid’s overthrow,

Who, in the park’s most mysterious corner,

Would bend his bow in guileful laughter,

His aspect causing us to daydream so!

Last night’s wind toppled him! The marble

Shattered with dawn’s breath. It’s sad to see

His pedestal, with sculptor’s name a mystery,

Scarce legible in the shadow of an arbour.

Oh, it’s sad to see the empty pedestal

All bare! And melancholy fancies entering

Wander through my dream, where deep chagrin

Calls up a future solitary and fateful.

Oh, it’s sad! – And you feel it, yes, you too,

Touched by the sight, though your roaming eye

Toys with the gold and crimson butterfly

Skimming the debris on the pathway strewn.

-o0o-

Cythera

A summer-house’s lattices

Tenderly hide our caresses,

Joy the rose-tree cools, sweet friend:

Scents of the rose, languidly,

Thanks to the passing summer breeze,

With her own fragrance blend:

As the promise her eyes gave,

Her courage is complete, while her

Lips yield exquisite fever:

And Love having sated all things save

Appetite: jams and sorbets here

Keep from us the ache of hunger.

-o0o-

The Sea-Shells

Each shell, encrusted, we see,

In the cave where we sought love’s goal,

Has its own peculiarity.

One has the purple colour of souls,

Ours, thief of the blood our hearts possess

When I burn and you flame, like hot coals.

That one affects your languorousness,

Your pallor, your weary form

Angered by my eyes’ mocking caress:

This one mimics the charm

Of your ear, and this I see

Your rosy neck, so full and warm:

But one, among all of them, troubled me.

-o0o-

The Innocents

High heels fought with their long dresses,

So that, a question of slopes and breezes,

Ankles sometimes glimmered to please us,

Ah, intercepted! – Dear foolishnesses!

Sometimes a jealous insect’s sting

Troubled necks of beauties under the branches,

White napes revealed in sudden flashes

A feast for our young eyes’ wild gazing.

Evening fell, ambiguous autumn evening:

The beauties, dreamers who leaned on our arms,

Whispered soft words, so deceptive, such charms,

That our souls were left quivering and singing.

-o0o-

Clair de Lune

Your soul is the choicest of countries

Where charming maskers, masked shepherdesses,

Go playing their lutes and dancing, yet gently

Sad beneath fantastic disguises.

While they sing in a minor key

Of all-conquering love and careless fortune,

They seem to mistrust their own fantasy

And their song melts away in the light of the moon,

In the quiet moonlight, lovely and sad,

That makes the birds dream in the trees, all

The tall water-jets sob with ecstasies,

The slender water-jets rising from marble.

-o0o-

Song of the Artless Ones

We are the artless ones,

Hair braided, eyes blue,

Who live almost hidden from view

In novels barely read.

We walk, arms interlaced,

And the day’s not so pure

As the depths of our thoughts,

And our dreams are azure.

And we run through the fields

And we laugh and we chatter,

From dawn to evening,

We chase butterflies’ shadows:

And shepherdesses’ bonnets

Protect our freshness

And our dresses – so thin –

Are of perfect whiteness.

The Don Juans, the Lotharios,

The Knights all eyes,

Pay their respects to us,

Their greetings and sighs:

In vain though, their grimaces:

They bruise their noses,

On ironic pleats

Of our vanishing dresses:

And our innocence still

Mocks the fantasies

Of those tilters at windmills

Though sometimes we feel

Our hearts beat fiercely

With clandestine dreams,

Knowing we’ll be future

Lovers of libertines.

-o0o-

The Nightingale

Like a loud flight of birds, dark complexity,

All my memories beating down on me,

Beating down through the yellow foliage

Of my heart’s bent alder-trunk, its gaze

Silvered violet in the lake of Regret,

Whose melancholy is still flowing yet,

Beat down, and then the evil murmur

That a moist rising breeze quells there,

Dies away by degrees in the leaves, so

In an instant you will hear no more, oh,

No more than a voice extolling the Absent,

No more than the voice – oh, languishment! –

Of the bird, my First Love, that still sings

As it did long ago on those first evenings;

And below the sad splendour of the moon

Rising in pale solemnity, a June

Night, melancholy, heavy with summer,

Full of silence and darkness, in the azure

That a gentle wind brushes, rocks asleep

The tree that trembles, the nightingale that weeps.

-o0o-

Dusk

The moon is red on the misted horizon;
In a fog that dances, the meadow
Sleeps in the smoke, frogs bellow
In green reeds through which frissons run;

The lilies close their shutters,
The poplars stretch far away,
Tall and serried, their spectres stray;
Among bushes the fireflies flicker;

The owls are awake, in soundless flight
They row through the air on heavy wings,
The zenith fills, sombrely glowing.
Pale Venus emerges, and it is Night.

-o0o-

Parisian Sketch

The moon was shedding her plates of zinc

In obtuse angles.

The plumes of smoke like ‘fives’ distinct

Rose thick and black from high roof-tangles.

The sky was grey, there wept a breeze

Like a bassoon.

Far off, a tom-cat, stealthy, discreet,

Miaowed, oh, strangely out of tune.

I walked, of divine Plato dreaming

And of Phidias,

Salamis, Marathon, under twinkling

Eyes, eyes of blue jets of gas.

-o0o-

My Familiar Dream

I often have this dream, strange, penetrating,

Of a woman, unknown, whom I love, who loves me,

And who’s never, each time, the same exactly,

Nor, exactly, different: and knows me, is loving.

Oh how she knows me, and my heart, growing

Clear for her alone, is no longer a problem,

For her alone: she alone understands, then,

How to cool the sweat of my brow with her weeping.

Is she dark, blonde, or auburn? – I’ve no idea.

Her name? I remember it’s vibrant and dear,

As those of the loved that life has exiled.

Her eyes are the same as a statue’s eyes,

And in her voice, distant, serious, mild,

The tone of dear voices, those that have died.

-o0o-