I cry out to you in voices and guises,
and in many tongues:

Every morning and tiring night,
becoming the muezzin,
I cry out
piteously for you;

Sometimes I deck myself in finery
and offer flowers
and fragrances, bursting out in hymns
wrung in ancient tongues;

Draped in seraphic white,
I sing in a dozen voices of the soul
chiming in halls
adorned of ancient glass

Sometimes, I strip myself bare
and chant as I whip myself
in savage frenzy and sacrificial rage
in some forest cave or secret corner:

Yet I fail
the dune song in the desert
wave dance on a lonely shore,
bird flight in evening gust

I cannot love.