Now what my mother told me one day as we sat at dinner together,
Of when she was a nearly grown girl living home with her parents on the old homestead.
A red squaw came one breakfast-time to the old homestead,
On her back she carried a bundle of rushes for rush-bottoming chairs,
Her hair, straight, shiny, coarse, black, profuse, half-envelop’d her face,
Her step was free and elastic, and her voice sounded exquisitely as she spoke.
My mother look’d in delight and amazement at the stranger,
She look’d at the freshness of her tall-borne face and full and pliant limbs,
The more she look’d upon her she loved her,
Never before had she seen such wonderful beauty and purity,
She made her sit on a bench by the jamb of the fireplace, she cook’d food for her,
She had no work to give her, but she gave her remembrance and fondness.
The red squaw staid all the forenoon, and toward the middle of the afternoon she went away,
O my mother was loth to have her go away,
All the week she thought of her, she watch’d for her many a month,
She remember’d her many a winter and many a summer,
But the red squaw never came nor was heard of there again.
The street about me roared with a deafening sound.
Tall, slender, in heavy mourning, majestic grief,
A woman passed, with a glittering hand
Raising, swinging the hem and flounces of her skirt;
Agile and graceful, her leg was like a statue's.
Tense as in a delirium, I drank
From her eyes, pale sky where tempests germinate,
The sweetness that enthralls and the pleasure that kills.
A lightning flash... then night! Fleeting beauty
By whose glance I was suddenly reborn,
Will I see you no more before eternity?
Elsewhere, far, far from here! too late! never perhaps!
For I know not where you fled, you know not where I go,
O you whom I would have loved, O you who knew it!
-- William Aggeler's translation of one of Baudelaire's poems
Reminds me of the time Gregg Allman showed up in my usual scruffy pool hall, sometime in the mid-90s. He was a big guy, in a white suit and snakeskin boots, and wherever he sat down it was like he was on a golden throne, spotlit and surrounded by writhing angels and giant lizards. Weird and memorable.
I wish I could give credit to whoever originally wrote this, but I forget. Anyway, the quote is: We fall in love the most with those we know the least.
EDIT: I remember the writer was referencing James Blunt's "You're Beautiful." But I still don't remember their name.
...damn, I was looking forward to reading words from the Man Himself. I wonder if He'd be inclined to participate in religious conversation (from which a Western Stranger could learn instead of run).
—- Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass