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TO NAK-KU
NAK-KU, desired! | |
| Thine eyes speak gifts | |
| But thy hands are empty. | |
| Thy lips draw me | |
| Like morning’s flame on a song-bird’s wing. | 5 |
| I follow—but thy kiss is denied. | |
| I am a hunter alone in a forest of silence. | |
| Under what bough | |
| Are the warm wings of thy kiss folded? | |
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| Amid the scent of berries drying | 10 |
| From my high roof I have seen the dusky sea | |
| Trip rustlingly along the sand-floors, | |
| In little moccasins of silver, moon-broidered with shells of longing. | |
| Ah, thy little moccasins, Nak-Ku! | |
| But thy feet recede from me like ebbing tides. | 15 |
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| I have closed my door: | |
| The heavy cedar-blanket hangs before it. | |
| Since thou comest not, | |
| Better that my narrow pine couch seem wide as a winter field. | |
| The moon makes silver shadows on my floor through the poplars. | 20 |
| The wind rustles the leaves, | |
| Swaying the boughs o’er the smoke-hole; | |
| The little silver shadows run toward my couch— | |
| Ah-hi, Nak-Ku! | |
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| I hear the pattering of women on the sand-paths: | 25 |
| Fluttered laughs, bird-whisperings before my lodge— | |
| “Oh lover, lover!” | |
| Brave little fingers tap upon the cedar-blanket. | |
| But I do not open my door— | |
| Better this grief! | 30 |
| I am thy poet, Nak-Ku, | |
| Faithful to her who has given me | |
| Dreams! | |
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NAK-KU ANSWERS
I have given dreams to Kan-il-Lak, the singer! | |
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| Oh, what care I, Kan-il-Lak, | 35 |
| Though thy hut be full of witches, | |
| Thy lips’ melody flown before their kisses? | |
| Know I not that all women | |
| Must to the singer bring their gifts? | |
| Know I not that to the singer comes at last | 40 |
| His hour of gift-judging? | |
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| I will lie, like a moonbeam, in thy heart. | |
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| A hundred gifts shall fall regarded not: | |
| But where among the dust of forgetfulness | |
| The one pearl shell is found— | 45 |
| Pure, faint-flushed with longing, | |
| The deeps no man has seen | |
| Brimming its lyric mouth with mystical murmurs— | |
| There shalt thou pause | |
| And render me thy song! | 50 |
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