To Nak-Ku
Thy lips draw me
Like morning's flame on a song-bird's wing.
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?
Amid the scent of berries drying
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.
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.
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!
I hear the pattering of women on the sand-paths:
Fluttered laughs, bird-whisperings before my lodge—
"Oh lover, lover!"
[173]
