(Vitam Impendere Amori: To Threaten Life for Love)

Love is dead within your arms
Do you remember his encounter
He-s dead you restore the charms
He returns at your encounter

Another spring of springs gone past
I think of all its tenderness
Farewell season done at last
You-ll return as tenderly

****

In the evening light that-s faded
Where our several loves brush by
Your memory lies enchained
Far from our shades that die

O hands bound by memory
Burning like a funeral pyre
Where the last black Phoenix
Perfection comes to respire

Link by link the chain wears thin
Deriding us your memory
Flies ah hear it you who rail
I kneel again at your feet

****

You-ve not surprised my secret yet
Already the cortège moves on
But left to us is the regret
of there being no connivance none

The rose floats at the water-s edge
The maskers have passed by in crowds
It trembles in me like a bell
This heavy secret you ask now

****

Evening falls and in the garden
Women tell their histories
to Night that not without disdain
spills their dark hair-s mysteries

Little children little children
Your wings have flown away
But you rose that defend yourself
Throw your unrivalled scents away

For now-s the hour of petty theft
Of plumes of flowers and of tresses
Gather the fountain jets so free
Of whom the roses are mistresses

****

You descended through the water clear
I drowned my self so in your glance
The soldier passes she leans down
Turns and breaks away a branch

You float on nocturnal waves
The flame is my own heart reversed
Coloured as that comb-s tortoiseshell
The wave that bathes you mirrors well

****
O my abandoned youth is dead
Like a garland faded
Here the season comes again
Of suspicion and disdain

The landscape-s formed of canvasses
A false stream of blood flows down
And under the tree the stars glow fresh
The only passer by-s a clown

The glass in the frame has cracked
An air defined uncertainly
Hovers between sound and thought
Between -to be- and memory

O my abandoned youth is dead
Like a garland faded
Here the season comes again
Of suspicion and disdain