He loved and lost and left for foreign lands
Away from olive branch and temperate bay,
Where what was known were climate's cold demands
And frost instead of dew proclaimed the day.
   Around the Earth his refuge lay; the air
   That gusts upon his tear-stained cheeks ripostes
   In slicing curls. In perilous despair
   He flies alone towards the snowcaps' gloss.
When Autumn clasped around the one who spurned
Him, Zephyr crossed beyond meridians,
Equator, spheres and hemispheres; he turned
To gentle Spring the sleeping hinterlands.
   But soon the wind returns again and sips 
   The bitterness of absence on his lips.

A dry and dusty desert now is he
With no oases for his parched dismay;
His still effulgence matched in irony
By flowering winds making him this way.
   What thrives in Spring and fashions growth must go
   The way of everything in transience.
   What breathes and dances in its vigor slows
   To feed each beast and bower standing hence. 
But science never soothes a tragedy;
Philosophy he has, which doesn't heal;
Divine life now unravels emptily;
A god without a godhead: what he feels.
   For though a life is short, a god be whole,
   Beside both life and death are lovers' souls.

Ye gods that see the mortals' suffering
Your own delivered to that fate laments.
His deathless blood an offering                  His cries
He'd make, his golden hair he's rent.        Incised.
   The cosmic dreaming gods              He sleeps now in
   Take shape in enervates                   The Stygian.
   In Physics' nightmare; Phoebus casts the rod
   Upon the ground and dashes it in hate.
Yet healing arts he holds not culpable,
These too he made as surely as the quoit.
As well the Sun in seasons pulls            His hand:
The whipping winds adroit.                   Dread operand.
   He drinks the bitter blame himself,
   The petals blue-on-white as delft.

In Winter when the night is wan and cold,
And evening shadows early on the brim
Of the horizon's nose, the dream is sold;
Enubilated purple drawn so slim.
   The lips of midnight purse and draw a belt
   Of transpositions all across the sky.
   Beneath immortal constellations pelt
   The waves of worldliness where no souls lie.
You turgid cosmos, where is what I've lost?
In novel spawning maws or in the old
Forgotten corners where the mourners cross
In Winter when the night is wan and cold?
   If every speck eternity contains
   Remains, then when will he come home again?

So, so unlike the petals were his hair;
His tresses gamboled as no iris did,
Those lesser beauties of the name they share,
No treasure like his face their veils have hid.
   His locks the deepest midnight color shone,
   And sunbeams would dislodge a golden crown
   No orchid wears, it was for him alone;
   And when they're kissed they make a different sound.
The nodding sway of violets in a breeze
Is not the way it bobbed when we would play.
A larkspur, when I kiss it, doesn't cleave
And cling upon my cheeks on humid days.
   But larkspurs now are all I have to keep;
   A larkspur and the anodyne of sleep.

Though you yourself seem deathless and divine,
Like all things–fleeting–you, the wind, allay.
What wonder then that you were undefined?
A passing season in another's day.
   I saw you with him, ancient evidence,
   And who would not be jealous should they lose
   That beauty of surpassing eminence?
   But you were not the one that he would choose.
And then, we have no clue of where you went.
Why should we when your nature is to turn,
To change, to bring to life the soil's intent,
Then dissipate when Summer comes to burn.
   You evanescently immortal one,
   Outliving us, you fly when Spring is done.

The Western wind had loved the Spartan prince.
He used to course throughout his curly hair,
And had been once enjoyed by Hyacinth;
But his true love would be Apollo fair.
   You whistler of the Spring, your loss is great,
   Beloved for your breeze that clothes the plains.
   Alas that Love should deign another fate,
   And shine the brightest light upon your pain.
Your coming sprouts the many crops and fruits,
But you would have one flower if you could–
That rarest blossom for your want acute–
Instead it's with the Sun god that he stood.
   And off they ran to Summer when he shined,
   In deeply-nighted Winter they reclined.

I know that we will meet again my dear,
Sweet Hyacinthus. I will sing a song
Forever, and the world will lend an ear;
To hear how Fate has done a fellow wrong.
   They'll hear I taught you every skill and art;
   Your favorite, which you had surpassed me in,
   Was music. And your singing was the start,
   The cycle of your songs the springtime's din.
Those songs resound no longer. You are dead,
And only I am left to turn the wheel.
It wasn't fair, I need you, but the tread
Of overwriting time brings death to heel.
   Myth shall restore you in your season then;
   To Hyperborea we'll go again.

He came to me beneath the harvest rains,
Most beautiful and most afflicted face;
When his enchantingness was not constrained
By frost a moment more, my day had place.
   The sunlight found its truest warmth in him,
   And in our season flourished love and song.
   But now the days are shorter, cold, and dim;
   I shrink away, and all creation longs.
I'll never see his face again, will I?
Beyond the realm of life my love's been snatched;
No godly healing arts did I not try,
But death among all things is never matched.
   If only I could nevermore return,
   Instead I will remember, wane, and yearn. 

These hands that wrought the lyre, that serpents fear,
What twisted work have you now wrought today?
They made that discus, now must make the bier;
My prince of flowers on the clearing lay.
   My victories dissolved on horror's floor,
   Is this defeat beneath the master, Fate?
   In contrapposto for a second more,
   His temple shattered by a searing plate.
Watch this, he said, but then it ricocheted.
The blood ejaculated from the wound.
Gore painting flowers, he could not be saved.
I felt a desperate death-lust in the swoon.
   My being obsoleted by a toss,
   Why ever live if live to feel this loss?