Treasured days of my youth and boyhood,
you're gone and won't be back again!
You know I'd cry if only I could,
then tears come and I wish they'd end.
The celestial history of my heart
is best told in plural. She
was a sweet girl playing the first part
set in this world's great misery.
The purest sunrise describes her gaze
and she'd smile with a flower's light.
Her hair as the dark series of waves
fashioned by sorrow and by night.
I was as timid as any boy.
But she, one could easily say,
disposed of my ermine love and joy
like Herodias and Salomé.
Treasured days of my youth and boyhood,
you're gone and won't be back again!
You know I'd cry if only I could
then tears come and I wish they'd end.
The next gave more solace, and was more
alive and full of flattery,
a woman sensitive to her core,
unique in my life and lovely.
Her pa**ion, fierce and energetic,
merged with an endless tenderness.
Her peplos of some pure sheer fabric.
covered an adept of Bacchus.
In her arms, she rocked my reverie
and sang it a sweet lullaby.
Then she k**ed this creature, too tiny,
too bereft of faith and light to die.
Treasured days of my youth and boyhood,
you're gone and won't be back again!
You know I'd cry if only I could,
then tears come and I wish they'd end.
My mouth was the place where another
kept the j**els of her pa**ion safe.
And this madwoman, my lover,
used her teeth to gnaw my heart away.
What she wanted was like a gun sight
that she trained on love of excess,
since myriad kisses and delight
were eternity's synthesis.
And from our nearly weightless skin
she would fabricate some Eden
without realizing that the Spring
or our flesh is a transient thing.
Treasured days of my youth and boyhood,
you're gone and won't be back again!
You know I'd cry if only I could,
then tears come and I wish they'd end.
All the women I've known in my time
are from many lands and climates.
If they're not my pretexts for a rhyme,
they float through my heart as spirits.
In vain did I look for the princess
who was sad from so much waiting.
Life is hard, bitter, of great duress,
and there's no princess left to sing!
In spite of time that's so unyielding,
thirst for love is my parched burden.
With gray hair I'm always moving,
toward the roses in the garden...
Treasured days of my youth and boyhood,
you're gone and won't be back again!
You know I'd cry if only I could,
then tears come and I wish they'd end.
But the Dawn is mine! And it's golden!