IN HER BLACK EYES

In her black eyes,
Which were shining
With a gentle smile
At a delightful vision,
I began to see
A happy small boy,
His head full of fairy tales,
Returning home

Through the green fields
In the gathering darkness
Of an early summer evening.

The carefree boy
Was murmuring a song
In which a nightingale
Told a silent red rose
Of his burning love.

The carefree boy
Was also striking
Two cool, flinty cobbles

Against each other,
And smiling with delight
At the galaxies of sparks.

Then the gentle smile left
The girl's black eyes;
Her beautiful face
Suddenly grew dark
With a glare of disgust.

She was a young, proud hawk,
Deceived in her hunt
By an old, fleshless pigeon,
Rotten and nauseating
Long before the blow of death.

She turned her eyes away,
As if saying to herself:
" How I hate
The ugliness of lust
In the dying eyes
Of decrepit, old men! "

In the sandstorm of her disgust
I began to see
An old dying vulture,
Abandoned by his flock
To rot away in anguish,
And be spat upon
By hungry, laughing hyenas.

The happy small boy
Stopped singing,
And threw away the flinty cobbles.
In a sudden gust
of freezing wind
He lost hope,
And sinking deep in his sorrow,
Began to cry.