You Look At Me With Your Big Eyes Poem by Peter Mamara

by M. Eminescu (1850-1889)

You look at me tenderly, with your big eyes,
And the way you move slowly, I see your lips.
You whisper sweet sad-words, like in a dream.

My ear probes these words to hear them
— Barely meaningful, yet full of meaning —
How the ancient poets listened to their muse.

I could read in your eye so much unrest,
Such a sweet pain of your desire,
Which, I reaped it all into my heart.

Your talk is the finest of any honey.
Chaos is in your dreamy eye,
And so much love, I can hear it softly.

Your pretty face, in a voluptuous pose,
Went nicely and sadly into my songs.
I added your body to my thought.

Because, only you live in my thought,
My life is yours, and so is my poem.
The way you inspire it, you can also wreck it.

Don't believe that I'm your big shot
When my songs take all kinds of forms.
Here, we see it sigh on three lines.

On the other side, it sighs on a Persian style,
It is the same, although it changes all the time.
It is full of you. It tells me of you.

It chooses sweet forms from any language.
Now you see it following a strait line,
Next you see it on Ferdowsi' s crooked lines.

And it is not all the time intended to please
— Other than to satisfy you, soul you.
You have to approve it with your clever mouth.

Hence, into thousands of forms it changes.
And it's intended to attract your sweet smiles.
Poor thing… and for you it performs.

And now you see it, how with their lure,
Sweet three-line verse, has taken a detour.
So it forgot what it wanted to tell you in these lines.

It wanted to tell you that it is full of you.
Its rhythm is restless because of your appeal.
And its thoughts are full of smiles.

And so, it holds sway over me.
It gathers round my days in verses.
And it tightens them up like a gardener, in stanzas.

It throws in your lap all these files.

(1876)

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