Sonnet.

La Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers
Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles ;
L'homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles
Qui l'observent avec des regards familiers.

Comme de longs échos qui de **** se confondent
Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité,
Vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarté,
Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent.

Il est des parfums frais comme des chairs d'enfants,
Doux comme les hautbois, verts comme les prairies,
- Et d'autres, corrompus, riches et triomphants,

Ayant l'expansion des choses infinies,
Comme l'ambre, le musc, le benjoin et l'encens,
Qui chantent les transports de l'esprit et des sens.

If you think this might be about you, please, don't stop reading.
Though I might not know you yet I have probably encountered you before.
We probably avoided colliding but secretly we wanted to. Maybe you are one of the boys on the bus who, for a sixteenth of a second makes my heart pound and my fingertips go numb, hoping that you'd notice me.

I want you to play your tongue across the piano keys of my teeth.
I want us to sing the themes of Pucchini operas while we make rainy Sunday pancakes.
I want to walk with you through the vineyards of your homeland.
Let me take the weight of your world and put it somewhere beneath my shoulders,
for me to carry with me.
I will never use us in the past tense.
We will never look sad in photographs
and our airmail correspondances will be kept in floral boxes and hidden
for one of our daughters to discover.
Our love will be in the brushstrokes of Signac and Monet.

We will discover that the island of Hawaii
is like the excess emotions of the world
that have congealed out of the earth
to be comforted by the rocking waves.
The sunsets hearts of the people will welcome us.
On the black earth
they walk
their hands filled with sun bleached coral stones.
And they spell out messages and write out the names of the ones they love
so even God can read what's in their hearts.

And when the world takes you from me
which it undoubtably will
I will scatter your ashes in the places we have walked.
along the vineyard trails
and the mountain peaks
and in the deepest oceans we crossed for one another
I will let go of you
let you leave my hands on the winds that rush through Death Valley
while I drive along the same highway
that we carved together.
And I will return to the island of Hawaii
carrying white stones to write out your name
for God to read.

Mystiques barcarolles,
Romances sans paroles,
Chère, puisque tes yeux,
Couleur des cieux,

Puisque ta voix, étrange
Vision qui dérange
Et trouble l'horizon
De ma raison,

Puisque l'arôme insigne
De ta pâleur de cygne
Et puisque la candeur
De ton odeur,

Ah ! puisque tout ton être,
Musique qui pénètre,
Nimbes d'anges défunts,
Tons et parfums,

A, sur d'almes cadences
En ses correspondances
Induit mon coeur subtil,
Ainsi soit-il !