Smile that gleams like a star.
Smile that seems to be everything you are.
I knew you before I loved you,
And then my loving grew,
My love became pleased at all my imagination could do:
To walk by your side, even though I didn’t know you, in the past,
With perfect admiration, not worrying whether things would last.
Love was easier when the first quiet admiration knew
To build a world and a place for it and a sky
And love, lovely in its wings, tumbled with ease after flying very high.
To be lighter than air
Was the aim of my love, to dwell softly in your soft hair,
To be shadow and light—kissing you everywhere.
Did I know you long ago, in those sad years,
When you lived in your disappointments and your tears?
Smile that gleams like a star.
Smile that seems to be everything you are.
I loved you before I knew you
After seeing you in a picture or two.
I felt I knew everything. I was pleased at what your eyes and smile could do.
My heart departs in an hour,
I am in, and I’m looking forward to meeting you;
Were I to hold you, and understand your power:
To make everything seem immediately new,
I would not feel the need to go
Into the inner regions. And your poem tells me: you know.
I admire you, living inside your beauty,
And I love, with certainty,
Your smile—as I know you smiled—smiling in all those years
Despite your disappointments and your tears.
Smile that gleams like a star.
Smile that seems to be everything you are.
I decided to love you madly.
Was it because every time you smiled, you smiled somewhat sadly?
The smile that smiles sadly is the smile that sees me.
You saw me with your smile, your paintings, your poetry,
And I felt, though it wasn’t, your smile looking directly at me
And without a thought whether it was wrong or right
I found myself thinking of you before I fell asleep at night,
And waking up, in love, the morning entirely new.
I am in love with you.
Your smile confronts my enemies and my years—
Your smile ends my disappointments and my tears.
