A Majestic Love Song

You are beautiful, like prophecies,
and sad, like those that come true,
calm, like the calmness afterward.
Black, like the white lonliness of jasmine.
With sharpened fangs: she-wolf and queen.

Your very short dress is in fashion,
your weeping and laughter come from ancient times,
perhaps from some book of other kings.
I’ve never seen foam at the mouth of a war horse,
but when you lathered your body with soap
I saw.

You are beautiful like prophecies
that never come true.
And this is the royal scar;
I pass over it with my tongue
and with pointed fingers over that sweet roughness.

With hard shoes you knock
prison bars to and fro around me.

Your wild rings
are the sacred leprosy of your fingers.

Out of the earth emerge
all I wished never to see again:
Pillar and window sill, cornice and jug, broken pieces
of wine.

—Yehuda Amichai