To The Nightingale of Platres
I remember that rapturous moment
When the midnight silence bent
To music that filled the pine scented air
In mountainous Platres*, where
A loner's ears were blessed to hear
A song that still rings in ear.
The starlets had gone to slumber that night
All seemed in a static state.
Then your melody rose from the pinewoods;
Its charm stays beyond my words.
Twinkling their eyes the starlets, then, woke up
Gently the night world pepped up.
The Chinese tale is no more a fable.
The bard** has made it stable--
Your enchanting singing can make the world
A realm of beauty so mild.
So keep singing in every mount and dale
My sweet little nightingale.
*Platres is a picturesque, quaint town nestled by the Trodos
mountains in the Mediterranean island, Cyprus.
The poem is based on a personal experience I had one night,
during a short stay in Platres in 1987 when I heard a
nightingale singing somewhere close by, in the pine woods.
** ‘ Ode To A Nightingale’ by John Keats.