Bernard Page 8
  my mouth tasted
of tears and blood,
I stank as I sweated:
impotent, able-less,
I was sick with love
unto death: tabl.

It was not long after
I lost what was left
of my mind: it went
where my heart had gone -
down a deep hole
and disappeared
in her darkness.
I was sick with despair:
my mind fell like a castle
for I knew that my love
had no hope anywhere.
I went crazy, silly,
babbling: tadlih.
And so you now find me,
wandering, distraught,
lost in the streets
of this desert city,
speaking in tongues,
praying to the stars,
mad, wet with tears,
lost, mad: huyuum.

I pray in my madness,
as I come, as I go,
pray ardently that we
the love of the god,
divinest of love,
thy love for me
as my love for thee,
may one day know,
as the clock turns back
to the beginning of time -
the first time I saw thee -