Ghazal

Seal your heart, which is unattainable and unbearable:
I can never be calmly happy with the unbearable.

These small favors that you have already granted shatter me.
How can kindnesses bring to me discontent unbearable?

You have given me admiration and poured out gentleness;
I am humbled and overwhelmed by this grace unbearable.

So much passion is in your voice as you speak of beauty now;
I am staring at you with longing that is unbearable.

In cool mornings and heady, still afternoons, you sing alone.
I am listening, and I sob with a joy unbearable.

Fascinated by animation that plays across your face,
I admire you with a sympathy near unbearable.

You are truly an artwork, sculpted with care, exactingly,
with a strength to which nothing earth-crafted is unbearable.

Oh! And how will I ever keep myself from just reaching out,
touching that flushing cheek, and trembling with fear unbearable?

If I only could smooth away all the grief that lingers there!
Yet more beautiful still are you when in pain unbearable.

Thus, we go singing endless rondeaux of bloodless suffering
while the universe weaves a carol: despair unbearable.