Ode To A Muse: My Spring in Winter

Ode To A Muse: My Spring in Winter

I cannot recall such a spring-day,

Than one spent with you through March, April and May:

Cool breeze in a purple morning woke me up

And smell of coffee from a cup;

Walking bare through the lowland dew

Lying on the flower bed I made for you.

Brush your fingers on my weary chest

And on my shoulder your curls may rest,

Your leg entwined and curled into mine

Like an old wall made young by wine,

Drunk with beauty, gentleness and youth

And you Terpsichore are safe in my arms of truth.

The smell of flowers everywhere around

And morning peace, only broken by thine sweet sound,

Only a whisper, all the same to me,

As if nature itself speaks the melody…

Alas the divine notes only you may produce:

“Hold me!” to thine worshiper they me reduce.

What golden ray on the horizon rises?

‘Tis the Sun, my second blindness.

The eyes that shine my face humble:

In them the prism I see, every colour and double;

Sailing from East to West, lost in the spectre,

I wander in your eyes of every day, every hour.

Then my gaze lowers to thine smile,

Never fades and stretches for a mile.

White pearls decorate what they so gladly wed,

The two pedals thin, poppy flower red,

That like opium smell and tempt me, your poet:

I must resist! For desire and passion, they sow it.

I and my Muse talk for hours and days

Suffer do I in all these manner of ways:

Gazing in your eyes not to see the body divine;

Keeping a breath apart not to taste the poppy vine;

Arms pressed as not to touch the milk-orchid skin;

This growing civil war is wearing me thin.

What else is to do than to stand my ground?

Else is there for my beast than be soothed by her sound?

Far we are from Helicon, far from your sisters,

Far from my brethren, far from gazes and whispers.

Still we long for solitude, which we ever so lack,

We should flee Gaia, Uranus and Atlas’ back.

Then you open my eyes with much hope and grace:

“Do you not see we have fled time and space?

Your truth, safety, vision and my gentleness side

Nothing and no one is there that us may divide.”

Those words struck me and released my sight,

On her, on us, on our immortal flight.

The Sun that had risen has parted and set.

Still my solar warmth beside me did not let

She painted orange and purple constellations in the sky

She scattered crystals on the bed on which we lay.

The shattered moon lit the meadows veils.

Mesmerised we look the dance of Zeus’s sails.

What is this? My mistress too changes in colour.

At the stroke of evenings enchanting hour,

Her eyelids turn into violets and her cheeks blossom

As if this mortal had not seen enough things awesome,

She slips a dress, transparent, green and fruity,

Reviling herself to me in all her divine beauty.

Waves that encircle a galley compose her lines

Pure perfection in all imperfection shines.

Time had no sense and passage through us,

But it also must part the lady and her poet, thus

She said: “Go to sleep poet, on this your bed,

To Helicon by the hour I must have fled.”

Part did we on the Summer Solstice, before midnight.

Nothing to leave each other but a little light;

She to me left her divine inspiration immortal,

And I in her, my love, and my heart mortal.

My Muse did go with a promise, ‘stead of a ring,

To always bring in Winter her gentle Spring.

The little things that make life be,

Never let them abandon me.

Let them live in my waste sea;

Sailing love, her and me.