Devotion

Not lost from my young years

Is silent devotion to a sound of bells,

To all churches' dusking altars

And their blue domes heaven-wide.

To an organ's tune at evening,

To wide squares fading in darkness,

And to a fountain that splashes, softly and quietly

And sweetly, like unintelligible children's babbling.

I see myself dreaming silently, folding the hands,

And whispering prayers forgotten for a long time,

And early gloom sombering my glance.

Since a woman's picture gleams

Out of confused shapes, wreathed by sinister grief,

And pours into me the chalice of nefarious shudders.