Waterlily

Do you know the flower, the fantastic

waterlily, celebrated in myth?

On a slim, ethereal stem bobs

its translucent, colorless head;

it blooms by reedy pools in groves,

protected by the swan, who circles it in solitary vigil;

it opens only in the moonlight

with which it shares its silver glimmer:

thus does it bloom, the magical sister of the star,

idolized for its dreamy, dark tendrils

which by the edge of the pool can be seen from afar,

never reaching what it yearns for.

Waterlily, so do I call the slim

maiden with night-dark locks and alabaster cheeks,

with deep foreboding thoughts showing in her eyes

as if they were ghosts imprisoned on Earth.

When she speaks, it is like the silvery rushing of water;

when she is silent, it is the pregnant silence of the moonlit night.

She seems to have exchanged radiant expressions with the stars,

whose language, of the same nature, she has grown accustomed to.

You can never grow weary of gazing in those eyes

fringed with silky, long lashes,

and you believe, as if blessedly, terrifyingly bewitched,

whatever the Romatics have dreamed about Elves.