Vol. 9

Without you the garden walk, cup and wine-vessel, the wild rose — nothing pleases. I will wander the desert like Majnun; I am not a moth to circle every candle, only yours.

I know why your eyes rain fire-filled tears — why your lashes hold the arrow that hunts hearts; I am much weakened; if the heart dies from grief it will die at your feet; I know — no one knows — I am the lover who longs to see you.

She appeared — my lost one, tonight; I circle and dance with the morning breeze; the revolving sky never accompanied us; the sun has become a guest in our gathering, moonlight spreading its radiance.

Old Age Has Arrived at the Season of Youth — the collision of time's advancement with the desire that belongs to youth. One of his most philosophically weighted recordings from the early sessions.

Burned by the brand of misfortune — the weary heart, the prison chains better than freedom, the beggar's bowl asking only for bread. A poem of total dispossession in which meaning itself has been lost.

In the end, O sea — the sea is addressed as a fellow sufferer with a mad heart, restlessness in its hands and waves in its head, asked where its dwelling is and how long it will burn.

At Dawn the Nightingale Said — the nightingale (bulbul) as the poet's alter ego, the bird that sings of roses and grief. Dawn as the liminal hour when the nightingale's message can be heard.

A song of separation and obsession — the speaker spending nights in the corner of longing, maddened by the beloved's face. The accusation of unfaithfulness and the speaker's own admitted madness exist side by side.

The star closed its eyes and rested — come; wine of light ran through the veins of night; you did not come when the sky held the Pleiades, now dawn has picked them away; at the moment of my death — come; you are the hope of the silver-hearted broken one.