Come, my kukui flower! Your eyes sing, your lips are a song of love. Speak to me. Your words are a calabash of cool water, poured over one thirsting. Or be silent, my wreath of jasmine. Your silence is a ripe lilikoe, a heap of fine tapa. Laugh, hinalo-bloom! Your laughter is as a breeze at night over ginger-blossoms. O my chaplet of maile! bury my face under your fragrant hair; let your face be near! Your face is as a leaf at a feast, filled with deliciousness. Come, my lehua bud! Place between my hands the twin bowls of kou; comfort my forehead against the cool gourd of your body. Caress me as the sea waves caress, O my mantle of bright feathers! "Better than poi and fish is love," it is written; kinder than the cool fruit of the palm, warm as a good tapa at night in the cold valleys, bitter as awa, yet sweet as the peeled joints of cane, is love. And you, you are love, mokihana wreath, you and I together, are love. Loves pass as the clouds sweep down from the mountains and pass, loves come and go as the tides. Come, therefore, my hala wreath, my delight, my fragrant, let us taste, while the tide is high! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE POPPY-LAND EXPRESS by EDGAR WADE ABBOT THE LONELY DEATH by ADELAIDE CRAPSEY THE DYING SOLDIER by ISAAC ROSENBERG WHAT THE BIRDS SAID by JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER BURY HIM DEEP by THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES JESUS - THE CONQUEROR RENOWNED by BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX |