A woman at a café’
She is a burning beauty so beguiling bright
As she sits in a café’ of a city under the night
Her skin over her face and limbs is spread like a dream
All the lights around her turn their heads in shame dim
Her legs peep beneath a dark collied skirt
Setting all passers by into anguish alert
What mortal hand or eye
Could frame or design your thigh
In what clay, in what mould
Were her eyes of fury and beauty rolled?
In what distant depths or vaulting high skies
Burnt the fire of her eyes?
He who framed her what dare he aspire?
What hand could dare size this intense fire?
Her shoulders, what an art
What craft could twist the sinews of her heart?
And when her heart begin to beat
What dread hands what dread feet?
Where is the hammer where is the chain
In what furnace she was give birth where it all began
The stars above the city threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the man make thee?
She, she, the burning fire of the night
Lent her ore to the canopy of the city so bright
The flames of the candles at her table
Competed to reflect their image in her eyes like shadows fragile
Her glass of wine did not delay; it had stelled
Her beauty's form within its convex heart
So proudly its bounty to the world it held
Claiming it never captured a better art
Burnt! Burnt! Beguiling beauty in bright
As the city approached the edge of the midnight
The trees at the avenue their blooming boughs dropped
To feel her blood in her veins throbbed
What immortal hand what heavenly eye
Dare contrive your fearful symmetry beneath this sky
And there was none in the city’s daughters
With the magic like her when she sat down to eat
And like the night music on the East river water
Was her voice loud in tease and in din beat
When as if her humor and soul were causing
The charmed river pausing
The waves at its banks to lie still gleaming
And the lulled winds seemed dreaming
And the midnight moon was weaving
Her bright image over the water deep
While her twin breasts were gently heaving
As if an infant was asleep
As she got up to leave
She walked in beauty into the night
That a city of cloudless climates can give
And all that was best in dark and bright
Were reflected in the lofty vaults of starry skies
And met in her structure and in her eyes
And thus mellowed to that tender glow of night
Which heaven bestowed on her yet to the gaudy day denied
Copy rights 2010
poem by Isaac Ziv
Added by Poetry Lover
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