DISCOURSE ON PURE VIRTUE
à Geeta
The brown girl, golden, sable eyed,
flourishing yellow hibiscus,
steps exuberant, august,
into August --
her lushly brocaded gold silk sari
lavishing honey light at her auburn feet,
sandalled, cedarly,
with scent of sandalwood haloing her,
her individualized, warm, light-dark body,
her every glance a direction of the air,
her look of mischievous -- even tart -– sweetness....
O has she...?
She has
come in from morning's slight autumnal chill,
her feet moistened with diamantine dew -–
how the sea summers in grass
(that same grass that rears at the sun
while butterflies mob frangipani...).
Behold her smile declaring
warm, sun-dyed, terracotta lips --
that chance come home -–
and I answer,
"You are light uplifting,
liberating me from murk,
from an inferno of squalor."
O! Let there be rum and molasses,
rice and mackerel, O Muse,
the Indian Ocean softening and sweetening the Atlantic,
this august autumn.
All these pleasures we will prove:
lotus like slow-motion lightning,
ivory gold fountaining from earth,
like you, a fresh light, sprung from earth.
à Geeta
The brown girl, golden, sable eyed,
flourishing yellow hibiscus,
steps exuberant, august,
into August --
her lushly brocaded gold silk sari
lavishing honey light at her auburn feet,
sandalled, cedarly,
with scent of sandalwood haloing her,
her individualized, warm, light-dark body,
her every glance a direction of the air,
her look of mischievous -- even tart -– sweetness....
O has she...?
She has
come in from morning's slight autumnal chill,
her feet moistened with diamantine dew -–
how the sea summers in grass
(that same grass that rears at the sun
while butterflies mob frangipani...).
Behold her smile declaring
warm, sun-dyed, terracotta lips --
that chance come home -–
and I answer,
"You are light uplifting,
liberating me from murk,
from an inferno of squalor."
O! Let there be rum and molasses,
rice and mackerel, O Muse,
the Indian Ocean softening and sweetening the Atlantic,
this august autumn.
All these pleasures we will prove:
lotus like slow-motion lightning,
ivory gold fountaining from earth,
like you, a fresh light, sprung from earth.