I love your lips when they're wet with wine
And red with a wild desire;
I love your eyes when the lovelight lies
Lit with a passionate fire.
I love your arms when the warm white flesh
Touches mine in a fond embrace;
I love your hair when the strands enmesh
Your kisses against my face.

Not for me the cold calm kiss
Of a virgin's bloodless love;
Not for me the saint's white bliss,
Nor the heart of a spotless dove.
But give me the love that so freely gives
And laughs at the whole world's blame,

When April bends above me
And finds me fast asleep
Dust need not keep the secret
A live heart died to keep.

When April tells the thrushes,
The meadow-larks will know,
And pipe the three words lightly
To all the winds that blow.

Above his roof the swallows,
In notes like far-blown rain,
Will tell the little sparrow
Beside his window-pane.

O sparrow, little sparrow,
When I am fast asleep,
Then tell my love the secret
That I have died to keep.

I love you
like dipping bread into salt and eating
Like waking up at night with high fever
and drinking water, with the tap in my mouth
Like unwrapping the heavy box from the postman
with no clue what it is
fluttering, happy, doubtful
I love you
like flying over the sea in a plane for the first time
Like something moves inside me
when it gets dark softly in Istanbul
I love you
Like thanking God that we live.

I love to see
Her looking up at me,
Stretched on a bed
In her pink dressing gown,
Her arms above her head,
Her hair all down.
I love to see
Her smiling up at me.

I Love this white and slender body,
These limbs that answer Love's caresses,
Passionate eyes, and forehead covered
With heavy waves of thick, black tresses.

You are the very one I've searched for
In many lands, in every weather.
You are my sort; you understand me;
As equals we can talk together.

In me you've found the man you care for.
And, for a while, you'll richly pay me
With kindness, kisses and endearments--
And then, as usual, you'll betray me.

I loved thee; and perchance until this moment
Within my breast is smouldering still the fire!
Yet I would spare thy pain the least renewal,
Nothing shall rouse again the old desire!

I loved thee with a silent desperation--
Now timid, now with jealousy brought low,
I loved devoutly,--with such deep devotion--
Ah may God grant another love thee so!


Another Translation:

I loved you once: perhaps that love has yet
To die down thoroughly within my soul;
But let it not dismay you any longer;

I love the Tsarskoselsky Gardens
Late in the fall when, in soft haze
Enfolded, as in sleep's embrace
They lie... The cold's breath slowly hardens,
And on the dull glass of the lake,
Clad in that same fine haze, white-winged
And strangely languid visions linger
And seem bemused, but half-awake.

The skies are grey, by not a star lit...
The evening's shadows onward press
And softly lick the steps dark scarlet
Of Catherine's lofty palaces.
Then dark the gardens grow and dreamy,
The stars appear and turn a dome,

I love the Forest;--I could dwell among
That silent people, till my thoughts up--grew
In nobly--ordered form, as to my view
Rose the succession of that lofty throng:--
The mellow footstep on a ground of leaves
Formed by the slow decay of nume'rous years,--
The couch of moss, whose growth alone appears,
Beneath the fir's inhospitable eaves,--
The chirp and flutter of some single bird,--
The rustle in the brake,--what precious store
Of joys have these on Poets' hearts conferred?
And then at times to send one's own voice out,

I love sensual women and not passionate ones. A passionate woman closes her eyes, moans and shouts and the enjoyment of a passionate woman is blind.

I love my sweet Armenia's word which is filled with the taste of sun,
I love our old lyre's melody from its mournful and weeping strings,
The vivacious fragrance of the blood-like flowers and the roses,
I love as well the graceful and agile dance of Nayirian girls.
I love as well our gloomy sky, our pure waters, luminous lake,
The summer's sun and the winter's sublime wind with a dragon's voice,
Also the black, unwelcoming walls of the huts lost in the dark,
And I love the thousand-year stone of the ancient cities as well.