I went to bed with a wandering girl,
her dark hair shone with glints of moon
and we played at love in my room of red,
till midnight rang and the stars came down.
When we went to sleep I gladly dreamed
that we played at love in a room of green.

But in that dream I fell asleep
and dreamt we lay in a room of black,
then the black door opened and a man stood there:
It is my husband screamed the girl,
the one I've feared for seven years,
he's come to take my soul from me.

We woke at once in the room of green,
My soul has gone! she cried in fear,
then the green door opened and a man came in:
It is my husband shrieked the girl,
The one I've fled these seven years,
he's come to take my love from me.

And when we woke in the room of red,
she trembled as she clung to me:
O husband where's my lover gone?
I looked around, no word I said,
but rent her limbs with smoking hands,
then closed the door on that room so red.

Echo, song and smoking wax make up the church entire,
as he gives himself to silent hands that take him
trusting to the bread and wine...
He turns over in his bed intrigued
at how his dying mind in its own way
gives him what his spirit needs.

He has a songbird in a cage,
blinded to improve her song,
who like the soul imprisoned in his skin,
made herself forget the skies
and the flowered forests of her home,
though underneath the sweetness of her song,
he hears her pine for some long lost love.

He likes to try to guess the world of sight:
the soil opening wide its many mouths
to receive the swaddled dead,
or the way the wings of his guardian angel
surely fill this room, as she sits beside his bed
watching him with eyes of stars.

In the end no angel came for him,
but a faun gripped him like a lover
and drew him out as joy leaping
self-forgotten through fields that blazed
like windows in the church of summer,
till he whirled to one who cried his name
and flew like a bird through his heart of flowers.