Fragment #58

#58

Mortality weighs heavy on my heart

I must find my love before you depart

Full of colorful flowers is my garden cart

                   I search, I search

I can’t bear the burden of him running away

As I finger this vessel bitten with acid in the clay

What will lift these doubts, what will allay

                   As I stagger, lurch

Melancholy the music you in yonder days did flow

Your flute makes a way with the mouth slow

Bring the beautiful gifts, children bestow

                   Song-delighting, clear-sounding lyre

I play, though all my skin old age already has wrinkled

My hair turned white after black it always twinkled

My legs and my knees do not carry me fast in this sprinkle

                   An old doe, not like fawns near

Age has taken its toll but what could I do

O Aphrodite, it is not possible to become young and new

But I can still at dawn with arms of roses of every hue

                   Bringing to the ends of the earth

I love him and am yet seized with desire

I am his rightful wife flaming on fire

My mind still imagines heady nights, to this I aspire

                   Love I might bestow, and mirth

But I love delicacy, gracefulness and fathomless fun

You gave me all of this, and this to me sparing me none

You still give the brilliance and beauty of the sun

Desire has allotted to few

Grant me another time with him, fight with me to accomplish

My desire, my cravings, my loves, they never will diminish

Be with me till the crowning and ultimate finish

                   Where love springs eternally new