A girl stands on a hill,
And her arms blow out kisses to the world.
But it is not to you they are blowing, it is not to you.

She is turning into a bird now, a bird which will take flight, brightness circling the stars, lightdreams flowing in its rosy diamond head...

That bird was you.

Perched on the outskirts of memory, this great bird
Will tell me its secrets, one by one,
Words poured forth from its many-colored beak

Sitting high up in the coppery boughs
The bird that was you.

Damn, damn, damn
I love you
Do you not know
How I have loved you, through these long years
Bird that plunged into me unknowingly its beak, joyful and merciless
And gorged with heart's-blood, grew red and fat on my lovesickness
Ripped off skin, left me bare to the bone, full of feeble cries
And still has not let me go, no, not for a single moment let me free.

ii

Michal, Michal
Youngest daughter of Kings
Daughter of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon
You have come across the desert at last
Your skin gold as the sands, your hair curled beneath the sun...
But you did not come to me, my love, you did not come to me.

My love, she is like a rose of Sharon...

One day I will have her: perhaps not. But in the end it doesn't matter, really: for hers is a name I cannot forget. That name, and all that is in her bearing, have attained for me the status of myth, a great glorious legend of all that is young girlhood: of light, and love, and a tortuous desire never to be fulfilled. Her name is Love to me. She will not belong to me.
What is she? Not a common thing of flesh and blood, surely...but an ideal of light stretched out upon the aether, beckoning, arms outstretched, beckoning, always beckoning, to me...

"Greater than all time,
Greater than myriad sadnesses,
Its wings slowly spread out, encompassing eternity
And I hear its laughter echoing
And a strange lightness is gleaming in its small black eye"

M. Rephun, 6/5/07