How long would you have loved me?
A lifetime?
Ah wait, but that was too long?
Let us say just a moment.
Life is best but a moment,
If life is scarcely a day.
Might you have loved me then?
Perhaps while you drank,
From my life’s delicate cup,
with your sweet face turned up,
To love's exquisite taste.
Just one rapturous moment,
While my love inhaled you,
Like the soul of a flower,
For the space of a breath,
Within the breath of my space,
Where my words had no power,
But did their best to express,
Something so divine, so enchanting,
As your souls lingering scent,
Thrilling through all of my mind,
But at last in a sigh,
to be breathed out and spent.
Just one moment no longer,
and then all of my strength and desire,
all my passion exhausted,
With nothing left of my fire,
Gray ash scattered in the wind.
But then would you have clung to me?
Would you have then loved me?
Or would you have loathed me,
and scorned me,
And ruthlessly flung me away?
Yet again?
This maddening moment, I beg let the next,
Show what it chooses to reveal.
Is it enough that you loved me but a moment?
It was I after all,
who let fate spin her wheel.
What though from my dream when I awake?
My love a mere frolic it does seem.
What is life at best but a dreaming sleep,
And what is love, but just a dream,
A brief fleeting thought,
Only for fools to keep?