Little Flower

Little Flower


I behold a little girl of seven,
Yes, with seven wonders,
Laughing in the embalming sunlight;

Chasing a butterfly with the swirling wind,
Which is but her own winged passion;

Gathering flowers in Beauty's own knowledge,
As she herself smells of jasmine and rosemary;

Jumping over running brooks,
Leaping upon her own soul.

What shall I do to carry you back
Into the Sea, Life's wide heart,
With me, and with
The torrents of spring in me,
My Love?

Tell me,
Daughter, Sister, Mother of my soul,

How can I not move as you move in
God's morning field,
Passing through my life like an
Implacable sweetness?

O you who hear my silence,
How can I not want to catch you,
As everything carries me unto you
Even in little, complicated, shy steps?

My heart is scarlet,
How can I not want to hold your hand
And place it there with its beat?

How can I not want to enfold you,
And all that is alive in you, in my arms
To tell you,
"I am also alive"?

How can I not want to bring you home
Upon my back and shoulders
And tell you of Love's desire?

Flower, little flower,
What lonely secrets have you to whisper
Unto the breeze and the ether
At the approach of this slow autumn?

A wayfarer and story-teller am I,
Who has moved from
Mist to mist,
From solitude to solitude.

What can I say of your
Rare beauty that I witness
At God's dawn-spanned window?

It delights me more than
My own knowledge of all silences,

It agonizes me more than
All the broken things in the path of time;

It befriends me more than
All the things that have ornamented my soul
With their shining dust and
Pricking memories.

I did not, at first, deliberately crave you like this,
Sweetheart;

Nor did I once try to attempt
To release a certain
Unsprung madness within me.

But, oh, I arrived at Love's door,
For your sake,
With a certain anxious fragility.

I was smashed by destiny's hand
To love you,
As if struck by a certain rare tempest.

Yet, tell me,
Of all the great things that we both know,
What can be more certain and ancient
Than such Might and Spontaneity?

For in it I have heard the voice of our lives,
And witnessed the eternal span of our dreams;
All within a single breath and heartbeat.

It is upon this thread of understanding,
That I have no choice other than
To know Love as Love,
And to love you like this.

Even if I have to burn all knowledge
Upon my sentimented lips,

Even if I have to pain my heart
With infinite tenderness and
Unbefriended understanding,

This heart shall always be inseparable
From you, my dear.

By the sun that slowly sets,
Whose faint reflection falls upon
The wind-caressed still water,
Without being imprisoned nor
Captured by it,

I do not seek your silence
Only to possess you in exchange of
Love's seasonal honey,

I do not wish to pluck you,
Not even with shyness and tenderness,
From the garden where you belong,
Where the roots of your loveliness are.

Rather, Sweetheart,
Place your heart in mine and
Listen:

I simply want your soft hand
To touch Life's own;

I long to have your fingers
Play Love upon the quivering strings
Of my soul.

I don't want Love's fleeting fragments,
Nor births and deaths;

I desire a certain Wholeness,
Like the rain upon my face,
And like the desert that burns unwitnessed.

I only long to caress you, Beloved,
To make your shyness resplendent.

I only yearn to touch you
To feel you rustling and living.

[For Mina. Saturday, 20/09/2008]

Dani