(Vitam Impendere Amori: To Threaten Life for Love)
Love is dead within your arms
Do you remember his encounter
Hes 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
Youll return as tenderly
****
In the evening light thats 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
****
Youve 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 waters 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 hairs mysteries
Little children little children
Your wings have flown away
But you rose that defend yourself
Throw your unrivalled scents away
For nows 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 combs 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 landscapes formed of canvasses
A false stream of blood flows down
And under the tree the stars glow fresh
The only passer bys 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
