Touch my temples with your fingers, scarlet rose.
Did God use a stronger light
When He fashioned and dropped the sun into the sky
Or dropped your black stars into their blue sea?
Treasure the touches of my fingers.
God did not spend His strongest light
On a sun above or a look of love,
But on a round gold ring, from you to me.
Touch my cheeks with your fingers, blue hyacinth.
Did God use a whiter silk
Weaving the veil for your fevered roses,
Or spinning the moon that lies across your face?
Treasure the touches of my fingers.
God did not waste His whitest web
On veils of silk or moons of milk,
But on a marriage cap, from you to me.
Popular Song of Baluchistan.
I made a bitter song
When I was a boy,
About a girl
With hot earth-coloured hair,
Who lived with me
And left me.
I made a sour song
On her marriage-day,
That ever his kisses
Would be ghosts of mine,
And ever the measure
Of his halting love
Flow to my music.
It was a silly song,
Dear wife with cool black hair,
And yet when I recall
(At night with you asleep)
That once you gave yourself
Before we met,
I do not quite well know
What song to make.
From the Burmese (nineteenth century) (¿ by Asmapur).
Brother, my thought of you
In this letter on a palm-leaf
Goes up about you
As her own scent
Goes up about the rose.
The bracelets on my arms
Have grown too large
Because you went away.
I think the sun of love
Melted the snow of parting,
For the white river of tears has overflowed.
But though I am sad
I am still beautiful,
The girl that you desired
In April.
Brother, my love for you
In this letter on a palm-leaf
Brightens about you
As her own rays
Brighten about the moon.
Love Poem of Cambodia.
Aischa was mine,
My tender cousin,
My blond lover;
And you knew our love,
Uncle without bowels,
Foul old man.
For a few weights of gold
You sold her to the blacks,
And they will drive a stinking trade
At the dark market;
Your slender daughter,
The free child of our hills.
She will go to serve the bed
Of a fat man with no God,
A guts that cannot walk,
A belly hiding his own feet,
A rolling paunch
Between itself and love.
She was slim and quick
Like the antelope of our hills
When he comes down in the summer-time
To bathe in the pools of Tereck,
Her stainless flesh
Was all moonlight.
Her long silk hair
Was of so fine a gold
And of so honey-like a brown
That bees flew there,
And her red lips
Were flowers in sunlight.
She was fair, alas, she was fair,
So that her beauty goes
To a garden of dying flowers,
Made one with the girls that mourn
And wither for light and love
Behind the harem bars.
And you have dirty dreams
That she will be Sultane,
And you will drink and boast
And roll about,
The grinning ancestor
Of little kings.
Hugging your very wicked gold
Within a greasy belt,
You paddle exulting like a bald ape
That glories to defile,
Unmindful of two hot young streams
Of tears.
You stole this dirty gold,
For this gold means
Your daughter's freedom
And your nephew's love,
Two fresh and lovely things
Groaning within your belt.
The sunny playing of our childhood
At the green foot of Elbours,
The starry playing of our youth
Beyond the flowery fences,
These sigh their lost delights
Within your belt.
Give me the gold;
Damn you, give me the gold....
You kill my mercy
When you kill my love....
Hold up your trembling sword;
For this is death.
* * * * *
I take the belt from the dead loins
That put away my love,
And turn my sweet white horse
After the caravan....
With dirty gold and clean steel
I'll set Aischa free.
Ballad of the Caucasus.
Softly into the saddle
Of my black horse with white feet;
Your brothers are frowning
And grasping swords in sleep.
My rifle is as clean as moonlight,
My flints are new;
My long grey sword is sighing
In his blue sheath.
Fatima gave me my grey sword
Of Temrouk steel,
Damascened in red gold
To cut a pathway for the feet of love.
My eye is dark and keen,
My hand has never trembled on the sword.
If your brothers rise and follow
On their stormy horses,
If they stretch their hot hands
To catch you from my breast,
My rifle shall not sing to them,
My steel shall spare.
My rifle's song is for my yellow girl,
My eye is dark and keen,
I'll send my bullet to the fairest heart
That ever lady loved with in the world.
My hand upon the sword
Shall be so strong,
He'll find the little laughing place
Where you dance in my breast;
And we'll have no more of the silly world
Where our lips must lie apart.
We'll let death pour our souls
Into one cup,
And mount like joyous birds to God
With hearts on fire,
And God will mingle us into one shape
In an eternal garden of gold stars.
Love Ballad of the Caucasus.
We were two green rushes by opposing banks,
And the small stream ran between.
Not till the water beat us down
Could we be brought together,
Not till the winter came
Could we be mingled in a frosty sleep,
Locked down and close.
From the Chinese ofJ. Wing(nineteenth century).
I sit on a white wood box
Smeared with the black name
Of a seller of white sugar.
The little brown table is so dirty
That if I had food
I do not think I could eat.
How can I promise violets drunken in wine
For your amusement,
How can I powder your blue cotton dress
With splinters of emerald,
How can I sing you songs of the amber pear,
Or pour for the finger-tips of your white fingers
Mingled scents in a rose agate bowl?
From the Chinese ofJ. Wing(nineteenth century).
I have seen a pathway shaded by green great trees,
A road bordered by thickets light with flowers.
My eyes have entered in under the green shadow,
And made a cool journey far along the road.
But I shall not take the road,
Because it does not lead to her house.
When she was born
They shut her little feet in iron boxes,
So that my beloved never walks the roads.
When she was born
They shut her heart in a box of iron,
So that my beloved shall never love me.
From the Chinese.
At the head of a thousand roaring warriors,
With the sound of gongs,
My husband has departed
Following glory.
At first I was overjoyed
To have a young girl's liberty.
Now I look at the yellowing willow-leaves;
They were green the day he left.
I wonder if he also was glad?
From the Chinese of Wang Ch'ang Ling (eighth century).
The women who were girls a long time ago
Are sitting between the flower bushes
And speaking softly together:
"They pretend that we are old and have white hair;
They say also that our faces
Are not like the spring moons.
"Perhaps it is a lie;
We cannot see ourselves.
"Who will tell us for certain
That winter is not at the other side of the mirror,
Obscuring our delights
And covering our hair with frost?"
From the Chinese of Wang Ch'ang Ling (eighth century).
The white frost covers all the arbute-trees,
Like powder on the faces of women.
Looking from window consider
That a man without women is like a flower
Naked without its leaves.
To drive away my bitterness
I write this thought with my narrowed breath
On the white frost.
From the Chinese of Wang Chi (sixth and seventh centuries).
Under the leaves and cool flowers
The wind brought me the sound of a flute
From far away.
I cut a branch of willow
And answered with a lazy song.
Even at night, when all slept,
The birds were listening to a conversation
In their own language.
From the Chinese of Li Po (705-763).
I am in love with a child dreaming at the window.
Not for her elaborate house
On the banks of Yellow River;
But for a willow-leaf she has let fall