Runo uno

I hear the whispers 

of the shadows of the trees

Break out in lilting melody, 

soft sung on summer breeze;

‘Tis born along all quivering

by undulating leaves,

Until frost exacts its cost 

left scattered on the ground.

I speak the unleashed power

of penitential prayer

To search out sacred mysteries, 

long locked beyond somewhere;

I’ve touched the implied bliss

of freedom without care,

Yet there is a blest discovery 

beyond all that I have found.

Worlds of my creation, 

a somnulescent god,

Roads into eternity,

if only briefly trod;

Exist for me exclusively 

as I on my pillow nod,

Until the morning sun erases

all vestiges of dawn.

There the most alluring eyes

bid my own suffice,

There, the dream impossible’s

acquired in just a trice,

There all hopes of my heart’s hunger,

not just once or twice,

Has lavished me, has ravished me,

until I can’t go on.

Sussurro

The tears of my heart anhydrous

shout, “Such joy now cease!”

Who has known, and read what’s shown,

and grant to me release;

Who will hear when I thus call, 

heart seeking a new lease,

And in their answer, ransom me

with stormy kiss of peace?

Runo due

My days leak out too rapidly

from this half-spent life

I am diminished by time ill advised, 

irrevocably thus spent,

(My heartskin’s darkening crimson gleam

bright savaged by slow knife.)

Still, I can’t call back to keep intact

such corpus cruelly wrent.

The minutes, the minutes,

the dance of the hours

The full moons, the new moons,

the sun’s ledgered powers,

All suntanned and frost bit

to fingers and toes,

The best we can do

is ride time as it goes.

Il secundo

Shark’s teeth festooning Calvert’s clay banks

form somber cliffs of aged sorrow,

Death traces of hungry old faces

once smiled, aghast, at tomorrow;

Pale shells still echo their clattering query,

alitter, along tidal shore-

Will porpoise laughter successfully rescue 

before my breath catches no more?