I and the Night
As this very line is written, midnights candle flares and gutters,
The breeze brings through my open window stories that the meadow utters.
The moonlit world attempts in vain to shed its covering of silver,
The breeze before my window makes the lilac gently sway and shiver.
Dove-grey, gracious beams transect and illuminate the sky,
Making it as full of magic as this letter is of rhyme.
The outside world is softly shrouded in mysterious rays of light,
Overflowing with its feelings, like my heart this sleepless night.
For many a year my heart has kept deeply hidden my darkest secret.
Nothing, not the breeze, may touch it, no one here will hear me speak it.
Of the anguish in my heart, what can any friend suspect?
How can he know the things that lie buried in my hearts dark depth?
Even the most ecstatic moment cannot steal a thought from
Inside the darkness of my heart, not can the arms or touch of woman.
Neither languid sleepy sighs, now a chalice full of wine
Can unloose what I have locked deep down in this heart of mine.
Through my window, sleepless, radiant, only night is entering.
Night alone knows of my secret, insomniac night knows everything.
Night knows that I am an orphan, spent, exhausted, agonised.
Two of us exist on earth: I and the night, I and night.
1913