If I were a poet
of love, I would make
a poem for your eyes as clear
as the transparent water in the marble pool.
And in my water poem
this is what I would say:
"I know your eyes do not answer mine,
they look and do not question when they look:
your clear eyes, your eyes have
the calm and good light,
the good light of the blossoming world, that I saw
one day from the arms of my mother."
—Antonio Machado, "If I were a poet," from Times Alone: Selected Poems of Antonio Machado, translated by Robert Bly (Wesleyan University Press, 1983)
