Classic Poem

The flowers of the night are unfolding
at the hour when I think of my dear ones.
In and out among the viburnums
flit the butterflies of the night.

Long since now, the outcries ceased sounding:
alone there one house still is whispering.
Nests are slumbering under the winglets,
eyes are slumbering under their lids.

From wide open calyx is breathing
the odor of strawberries crimson.
Brightly burns a light in the room there.
Grass is growing over the ditch.

A bee, the late comer, is buzzing
that finds the cells taken already.
Slowly across the blue stretch of heaven
strays the Pleiad hen with her brood.

Through all the long night time the fragrance
that mounts on the breeze is exhaling.
Upward mounts the light o'er the stairway,
beams forth brightly above, and is gone.

'Tis daybreak. The petals, crushed lightly,
are folding themselves; there is brooding
deep within them, soft and mysterious,
no one knows what rapture undreamed.