A sunflower, you burst open onto earth with the golden hues
of an eternal summer, sprinkling diamond-sized seeds of mirth
on hot, bare soil sprouting weed-grass.
I see pearled raindrops flowing unbridled from your eyelids,
salty, like tears, and sunbeams become you, on the sand
on which you lie, garlanded, your face marble-textured,
serene in moksha repose. This was your liberating fate.

You made the earth quake with rain of blood
in the sudden aftermath. When you left my heart died with you
flower of the Portuguese soil, amber blossom of dreamclouds,
soaring over the green-ochre Algrave shrublands,
seeking the Monchique's cool and the shade of the sturdy olive tree;
the blue Atlantic perennial in the distance.
I watch you traversing space, from the hot, dusty, gravel road
fenced by the Quinta de la Cruz, to quaint Portimao
and the miles beyond. I read you in hibiscus and roses pink, red
and white; mauve bougainvillaea and purple morning-glory.
You are contained in the lemon tree and the magnolia,
and fir-trees with their roots in the sky. I hear your voice
in the husky timbre of warm wind over rugged plains.
Your silhouette, slight, slides under oak doors,
through keyholes and French windows, pleading once more
to be centre of merry-making, perfumed in spirits,
in your white mediterranean villa.

Now, in dusk's still half-light, a wistful zephyr scatters torn petals
on the dust. Your aquamarine shawl drapes over my dreams
like the peacock's glory. Your bracelet of pearls slumbers
in its bed of silk, and filigreed platinum ring rests, sedately,
on a finger. Like the corona at the sun's circumference
you will continue to sear hearts, diffusing celestial heat.