Anna de Noailles

1876-1933 / Romania

Offering to Pan

THIS wooden cup, black as an apple pip,
Where I with hard insinuating knife
Have carved a vine-leaf curling to its tip
With node and fold and tendril true to life,

I yield it up to Pan in memory
Of that day when the shepherd Damis rushed
Upon me, snatched it, and drank after me,
Laughing when at his impudence I blushed.

Not knowing where the horned god's altar is,
I leave my offering in the rock's cleft here.
- But now my heart is burning for a kiss
More deep, and longer clinging, and more near . . .
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