The Walk toward Love, Gaston Miron

excerpt

The Walk toward Love

Your eyes are the grey of fields of dew
of adventure and light years
the sweetness back of the breezes in May

you will come all sunstruck with existing
your mouth invaded by the coolness of grass
your body ripened by the forgotten gardens
where your breasts work their magic spells
you arise, you are dawn in my arms
where you change like the season
walking in a country of breath I'll take you
at the end of miseries at the end of excesses
I want to make you love life our life

Gaston Miron

Translated by Mary Anne Caws

The Yale Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century French Poetry

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old, and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.

John Keats

in a blur of orchid dream said, Princess Haiku

a garden that time does not know said, Princess Haiku

a theater of flowers, said Princess Haiku

"To Be or not to be."
W.S.