Love Me - I Love You
Love me - I love you,
Love me, my baby;
Sing it high, sing it low,
Sing it as may be.
Mother's arms under you,
Her eyes above you;
Sing it high, sing it low,
Love me - I love you.
Love me - I love you,
Love me, my baby;
Sing it high, sing it low,
Sing it as may be.
Mother's arms under you,
Her eyes above you;
Sing it high, sing it low,
Love me - I love you.
IF you had been where I have been
(Grey, grey the skies above),
And you had seen what I have seen,
You would not laugh at love.
Seek, seek till you find a rose
Red all through to its petal-tips,
And you shall know the curve of her mouth,
The scent of her breath and the red of her lips.
If you had heard what I have heard
(Dull, dull the beat of the sea).
Your heart would leap like a singing bird
Troubled and thrilled by ecstasy.
Stars sing in the dark o' the night,
Birds sing in the gold o' the noon;
Love lives beyond
The tomb, the earth, which fades like dew-
I love the fond,
The faithful, and the true.
Love lies in sleep,
The happiness of healthy dreams,
Eve's dews may weep,
But love delightful seems.
'Tis seen in flowers,
And in the even's pearly dew
On earth's green hours,
And in the heaven's eternal blue.
'Tis heard in spring
When light and sunbeams, warm and kind,
On angels wing
Bring love and music to the wind.
And where is voice
So young, so beautiful, so sweet
As nature's choice,
I.
I, too, have come to feel and see
How little in the world can be
Ours, as we pine and pass —
How all we long for, know of, love,
As in a dream from us remove,
Till each becomes the shadow of
A light that was.
II.
We must all somehow be made
One with time, that fleeting shade;
Until we within the dust
Wither as sweet violets must
In their own scent, as they lie
Like a virgin memory
Trembling with its sweetest breath
In the mystery of death.
Earliest morning, switching all the tracks
that cross the sky from cinder star to star,
coupling the ends of streets
to trains of light.
now draw us into daylight in our beds;
and clear away what presses on the brain:
put out the neon shapes
that float and swell and glare
down the gray avenue between the eyes
in pinks and yellows, letters and twitching signs.
Hang-over moons, wane, wane!
From the window I see
an immense city, carefully revealed,
Love lies bleeding in the bed whereover
Roses lean with smiling mouths or pleading:
Earth lies laughing where the sun's dart clove her:
Love lies bleeding.
Stately shine his purple plumes, exceeding
Pride of princes: nor shall maid or lover
Find on earth a fairer sign worth heeding.
Yet may love, sore wounded scarce recover
Strength and spirit again, with life receding:
Hope and joy, wind-winged, about him hover:
Love lies bleeding.
I am in a crate, the crate that was ours,
full of white shirts and salad greens,
the icebox knocking at our delectable knocks,
and I wore movies in my eyes,
and you wore eggs in your tunnel,
and we played sheets, sheets, sheets
all day, even in the bathtub like lunatics.
But today I set the bed afire
and smoke is filling the room,
it is getting hot enough for the walls to melt,
and the icebox, a gluey white tooth.
I have on a mask in order to write my last words,
and they are just for you, and I will place them
Combed by the cold seas, Bering and Pacific,
These are the exile islands of the mind.
All the charts and history you can muster
Will not make them real as the fog is real
Or crystal as a certain hour is clear
if you can wait.
Write to me often, darling.
Thrown up hurriedly for a late-crossing people,
These are unsettled mountains where I walk,
They dance at the center still and spout new ash;
The teeming salmon remember in their courses
When they were not, and the winds run into the hills
By an old habit.
O sufferers from intense nervous tension!
Listen, there's a love land nearby.
Here, thick smoke has screened all scenes.
From there, the sky of immortality may
be seen most clearly.
Here you can't catch your own speech.
Even Divine breath is audible over there.
“Even far, I’m thy very near.
This always keep in the heart, My Dear!
Moon and Lily both are
from each other, away very far.
Still flows all the while
their love ever-juvenile.
For a loving couple, see,
the distance may whatever be,
hers is he
and his is she.”
[ From Poet Upendra Bhanja’s Oriya Kā vya ‘Prema-Sudhā nidhi’ (Chapter-XIV) , Translated by: Dr. Harekrishna Meher ]