Moorish Gracefully Dark Eyes

 

            “Delicate words, delicate souls.

                I remember … but it was a long

time ago,” she’d say with a sigh.

 

Just as pearls thread a nightfall path

along a woman’s lustrous neck

that, were it a garden, would point

to an alabaster fountain in its heart

 

while the twilight is slowly being let

to revel away amid gilded stripes

laid down on the beds by fanned lights

from the spearing and setting sun,

 

there are other moments too when

beauty binds us through the eyes

as they welcome their descant’s fill.

 

But can you see and find in turn

who on earth is so gently couched

in the tacit woman’s umbrous eyes?

Poetry of Naked Marble Quality

 

“They though only of love,

of music and poetry.”

Washington Irving, The Alhambra Tales

 

Poetry ought to be

like a Persian khāné

or like a Moorish dar

with an atrium, a court,

a patio, open to the sky,

having silence for its silk

that speaks from a fountain

whose enlivening stream

is meant to kiss from below

the one that bends above.

Like a gaze well-latticed

and lashed—to dispense

its coup de grace, having

her figure, breath, and sound.

Daughters and Sons of the Alhambra

“In the center stands the fountain

famous in story and song.”

Washington Irving, The Alhambra Tales

 

Speaking in Washington Irving’s strain

and his Romantic Alhambra Tales,

inspired, certain souls strive & aspire

to obtain either in poesy or in love

‘the element in its crystal purity,’

springing from some place above,

 

and the sight and sense unfolded

waxes to regain the long-subdued

marvel of enchanting novelty—

that is original, aureate, radiant

in setting all if it comes within

to spell like an astute musician

and one who is a magician natural—

with a fretwork of love’s tender words.