A Simple Song

Come to me with the full moon,
tell me a word or two,
all the garden will be soon
sprinkled with lustrous dew.

Hold your flute, your dappled scarf,
knock on the front door,
if the living can long and love,
the dead can even more.

Tell me whom you know there,
who can hold you tight
in the slow atmosphere
of your horrid night.

Kiss me with your dear warm lips,
let me sob and listen:
I won't tell the difference
between is and isn't.

Here is your cosmetic box,
here is your Parthian dye.
On the coruscating moss
steps the hasty day.

It has come to take you hence,
but do not yield to fear:
I won't tell the difference
between there and here.

If the dead can die and live,
the living can even more,
the dawn is letting through its sieve
the precious midnight ore,

to find the pieces of the sun's
intoxicating gold,
what truly happened only once,
will not release its hold.

To the horizon green and pale
glides up the fiery ship,
no wind is flapping through the sail,
the pennants glimpse and flip.

The butcher-bird is shrieking, hit
by the vermilion oar,
I never loved you when you lived,
I never cried before.