Divan 27

For you I would be perfect, emptied
like the day that falls to its knees
to set two stars behind your eyes.
For you I would be undivided,
like the night, which I know to be
the blue dress you pull over your head.

The caress of your hand on my belly
is pulling ten-thousand swallows
from the primeval caves of my sleeping loins;
and the red rose, lost, no longer symbolic
because it is every poet’s symbol
is searching for fulfillment
under the transparent ivory of your skin.
From your cheeks to your breasts
to your womb, it fades and reappears
searching for an avenue of blood.
With my hands I am seeking,
with all my strength I am holding you to me,
with all our love we are searching
for the release that comes like the dusk
when it carries the heat away and opens
a dark gate to a universe of falling stars.

Is this our culmination, the perfection of two made one?
Maybe a god who has the head of a man,
the pleasure of a woman, the feet of a horse,
and the eyes of the wind—maybe he is perfect.
The dream is not anymore a dream, and the petals
of the rose are ripped with a thorn from its stem.

For you I would be more than a man
emptied of desire, I would be more than my will,
which is burdened from the heights I uphold.
For you I would lie in the lap of the gods
and let my spirit, which is homeless,
roam between the quiet of my mind
and the vision of you asleep in my bed.