To be here, to be there, and not to be;
Thou hath the whole rivers inside of me,
Thou art a night, a lonely sunny day;
That hath melted my souls away.
To be thy blood, thy lover, thy asylum;
To dwell within thee, to become thy poems.
Thou hath carried all my dried wounds away;
Thou art meant for me, and I shall stay.
Their peaceful songs, too much noise;
Titled feuds, crowned falsehoods,
My homeland, unknown to my youth;
Stealing my sanity, my warmed voice.
Their music too, from a broken home;
Telling me they would ne’er come;
My hometown, yet foreign to me;
Adrift in bulk, losing my poetry.
To be here, to live, but not to see;
Yet to be unchained, and break free,
Thou art a yard, a bush, a pear tree;
Thou yield the whole love inside of me,
Thou stirred the birth of my presence;
Thou breathed love to my concerns.
Thou art my reverence, my faith;
Thou revoked my disgrace, my hate.
Their masterpiece, vainly serene;
When they could sing, I was not seen;
Too common, like the youth about us
Not knowing when life could go past.
Today shall end, but merely so
They could not smell yesterday, no;
Nor shall their hard grieves glance further,
Now, everlastingly, forever.
I long to be in tales faraway;
That they shall not see me in today;
Not in winter, nor the heat of June;
Not in daylight, nor under the moon.
Not in water, nor stark frost;
They could not see me under their rose;
Then I could break free, I could see you
To tell you about the truth, to give you—my love.
One island is too grey to me;
To the southern edge of Earth;
If I said I could sail for thee;
Would thou be my tree, my hearth?
But not to be here, ever and again;
To clear my soul of their sold pain,
To be alone, but I could be fine;
To head to the North with my mind.
One soil thought she was too charming;
Nor that I knew them, that morning,
And in spring, their snarky heirs
Bowed down to *** and stark roses;
None of what I did look fair,
Nor the clean spruce of my prose.
Everywhere I went, just the ground
Grinning kindly at my crusted sounds.
One land was too high, and glamour
Encapped the heights of its odour;
Encompassing the love I had, and here
This is the land of birth, but hear—
Love is felt nowhere close to me, so
I shall be bound to the other I know;
I shall launch my sails, and my voyage
Departs at time’s coming of age.
One ground became too proud, and he
Lifted himself off the myriads of me;
The rebel, the judge, the jubilant
The only consolation I wanted;
He could not catch in me, my sanctity
And all love putrefied, and died.
To whom, that I became, still a mystery
A waste, a wailing, a soiled story.
To run free, to breathe away from here
To become the whole calls I hear;
Being the roads with stars and sunlight
By the rosebuds of the Northern Light.
To be the prominent in me, and to thee
That I come home, every day and night;
To be free to love, and blindly sing
Until dawn comes to force, on chaste mornings.
To come closer, to be with you
To drift away from wrong to true;
And call my love back again, from the woods
Planted wild in mists and dreamful shadows.
To call you home, by the green fields
With careened paths and gravel shields;
To be the poet again, the one I have—
To embrace all that I once left.
To be thy finger, thy wrist, thy face;
To be sole white and pure of lace;
To be the accessories of thy dreams;
To be the wife of thy white nights.
When thou heard the frost, and screamed;
My nights went more fearful then they seemed,
Too much fate and moist, poorly blended;
My nightmares then ne’er ended.
To be the living, the door, the house;
To drench the desires thou aroused,
To be the winter, the lilac to behold;
To be felt as my love goes too bold,
And not ignored as I go beyond;
Not to be halted, be scorned, be torn,
I have loved every day, every night—
Then I have dreamt of your bluest sight.
To cherish my breath, my air, my chest;
The living power of all our flesh,
The hungriness, but knowledge of my heart
Not to take our exchanged poems apart;
For I have played my part, and kept my love
For you, and as here ‘tis not enough;
I have loved, and unloved again
My heart hath been a scorching pain.
To swim in this image of thine, and see
Which memory I shall keep to me;
In which my arts shall come to presence
From noon to night, and prevalent;
In which t’ere is only omnipresence
With luminous pages, and their scent;
Too ambiguous too deny, clear to hate
They shall admire it, though ‘tis late.
To be the vine, and grapes of thy yard
To be the fine fruits of toil, so hard;
To be the last one to read the sky, that
I shall still embrace, to the last.
Not to be here, in that life again;
Only the sorrows and dramas of pain,
I shall soar for a greater gain;
Feeding off clouds, drinking the rain.
To be the tales, rhythms of my heart;
To admire from far away,
And unite back again when ‘tis time;
All those cascades of madness and solitude;
Now, all smaller poesies shall rise and rhyme;
Calling the same hymns and magnitude;
I shall be there, and not long now—
I’ll stand still, and not flinch somehow.
To be the dress, the fashion of my love;
My feelings now imitate the skies,
All emotions are moderate, and enough
My heartbeat shall tell no lies;
Then, all torn sonnets cross my mind;
At that time though, thou shall be mine;
I shall be there soon, tomorrow—
Wait for me there, as thou shall know.
To be the kind, the temperate of my heart
To be the pen and the poem, the bard;
All notions are justified, and seen
It shall be autumn that I arrive in;
When, all stanzas clearly written
And all workings exotic and firmed;
At that time though, thou shall see—
All the loving and excitement in me.
To be the warmth, the sustained cold
And the reason my sight still beholds;
All thoughts are visible, and bearable
All daydreamed paths grow’n feasible;
That, all visions notably bound
Thou shall embrace my tones and sounds;
With graceful moves, lithe and sleek
I cometh to love thee, every day of the week.
To be the charm, the one in thy arms
I shall surrender to Midnight’s swarms;
And be the one for thee, for the night
Over all brief and lengthy sights;
There, holding thee all winter and summer
A destination that lasts forever;
At that time soon, thou shall love me
And my presence of eternity.
To be the destiny, on carpeted nights
That magic works through our frights;
Making fears but a buoyant gift,
And the beauty of the night so deep.
Holding me, lulling thyself to sleep
A slumber to remember, too keep.
Thy florid hair falling into my face;
Thy locks flirting with my embrace.
To be the envisioned, the right
To be thy illusion, thy envied night;
And be the one who shall not fail
I shall crumble out of my wooden shell;
To throw myself into that golden mark
That becomes thee, oft’ by fall’n sparks;
To come with boughs of joy, and laugh;
To fulfill thee with all my love.