My love, I returned from travel and sorrow
to your voice, to your hand flying on the guitar,
to the fire interrupting the autumn with kisses,
to the night that circles through the sky.
I ask for bread and dominion for all;
for the worker with no future I ask for land.
May no one expect my blood or my song to rest!
But I cannot give up your love, not without dying.
So: play the waltz of the tranquil moon,
the barcarole, on the fluid guitar,
till my head lolls, dreaming:
for all my life’s sleeplessness has woven
this shelter in the grove where your hand lives and flies,
watching over the night of the sleeping traveler.