She won’t leave again. 
She’s found once more
Her rightful place,
Same old lady
With a pretty new face. 
Let the deacon pray
And the doctor talk,
The mice will squeak
And the ghosts will walk. 
There’s a crafty smile
On the landlady’s face,
The old woman’s gone,
But she’s filled her place!

Landlady: 
It’s nothing to me
If the old woman’s dead,
There’s somebody sleeping
In every bed!

II.  Love Poems in Summer

Singalese Love Songs

I

Your eyes are beautiful beggars,
Careless singing minstrels,
Who will not starve
Nor sleep cold under the sky
If they receive no largess
Of mine.

Once lived a woman
Of great charity—­

At last
Her own children
Begged for bread.

II

I would make you love me
That you might possess
Desire—­

For to your heart
Beauty is a burned-out torch,
And Faith, a blind pigeon,
Friendship, a curious Persian myth,
And Love, blank emptiness,
Bearing no significance
Nor any reality.

Only Weariness is yours: 
I would make you love me
That you might possess
Desire.

III

Is my love
Of flesh or spirit? 
I only know to me
Your eyes are wholly you.

Our glances dart
Like the flash of a bird
Gone, before the colour of his wing
Is seen.

I have not bathed my soul
In your eyes,
My soul would drown.

IV

I have starved to know your lips
Yet my soul
Does not die of want.

For only dreams are real,
And fulfilment is an illusion,
There is but one fulfilment,
Blind Nature’s way—­

My arms reach toward illusion,
And I would carry mist against my heart,
Not the warm, heavy head
Of a sleeping child.

Starving, I hold my dream.

V

What do you seek,
Beloved?

When you have had
All of me
There will remain for you
One beautiful desire the less.

You think you seek my love
But you seek
My denial.

Hunger, Want,
Is the only pain
I would not spare you—­
Alas, that too
Will die!

The Silent Pool

Your smile is a heron, flying
Over waters cool,
My thoughts of you are blue Iris! 
Today is the silent pool
Which shining heron and Iris blue
Are mirrored on.

Tomorrow
Will still reflect the Iris—­
My thoughts of you;
But the heron will be gone.

Nocturne

It is enough
To feel your beauty
With the lingers
Of my heart,

Your beauty, like the starlight,
Filling night so gently, that it dreams
Unwakened.