Helen

Helen
We were ready to merge but she stopped me.
‘I haven’t finished looking at you,’ she said.

Dazed in her aura
She saw her image stamped deep
On my molten heart.

Caught licking my dry upper lip
She caressed my burning cheeks.
I was like a rock in the sea beaten
By the waves of desire from every side.

Defenceless I was thinking that
All things are susceptible to Love:
Fire, water even the polar caps.

You might think I’m weak but am not.
Because no one ever has and no one ever will
Escape love not while there is beauty
And not while eyes can see.

She kissed me and in her arms
I tasted the honey of her soul.

Sansrkrit poems

H A L F A D O Z E N S A N S K R I T P O E M S


Surely the god of love became her willing slave,
Obedient to the orders that her glances gave.
*
If the forest of her hair
Calls you to explore the land,
And her breasts, those mountains fair,
Tempt that mountaineer, your hand-
Stop! Before it is too late:
Love, the brigand, lies in wait.

` *
A hundred times I learnt from my philosophy
To think no more of love, this vanity,
This dream, this source of all regret,
This emptiness.
But no philosophy can make my heart forget
Her loveliness.

*

No, but look here now, this is just absurd,
The way our famous poets talk of girls
As weak and winsome. Weak ? Is this a word
To use of those who, with a shake of curls
And with the triumph of a modest glance
Can lead the very gods a merry dance?

*
Blow, wind, to where my loved one is,
Touch her, and come and touch me soon:
I’ll feel her gentle touch through you,
And meet her beauty in the moon.
These things are much for one who loves –
A man can live by them alone –That she and I breathe the same air,
And that the earth we tread is one.

*

The moon tries every month in vain
To paint a picture of your face;
And having failed to catch its grace
Destroys the work, and starts again.

Helen II

Helen II

I was a sphinx gazing at
The desert of my discontent
Before I tasted your lips.

After you kissed me
Everything changed:
The desert is a savanna now
And I sing the fandangos of our love.

Only the written kisses
Survive the brief
Incandescent alchemy
Of human passion,
The poets wrote

But that is not true
Cause when you look at me I burn,
You touch me and I’m caught.

Poets, what would they know
About love.

But I can excuse them
Because they cannot hear
The fandangos of our love.

And never tasted
The nectar of your soul.

Nicholas Fourikis- 14th Feb 08