When You Walk Among the Flowers

My Love, you are nearer than the breath
That Heaven entrusted to my soul.
Before I knew your sacred name,
The stars had whispered it to me.

You are the quiet dawn
Resting upon the eyelids of the earth;
The first white rose that teaches spring
How beauty learns to bloom.

Walk once into the garden, Beloved,
And every blossom shall bow its fragrant head.
The proud cedar will soften its ancient pride,
The lily will forget its thousand songs.

The moon has borrowed all her silver
From the light that sleeps within your eyes;
The rivers learned their gentle music
From the kindness of your voice.

When you smile,
Even the lonely clouds
Lay down their grief
Upon the hills in peace.

The wind that wanders through the valleys
Returns perfumed by your passing;
And every bird, astonished into silence,
Listens for your footsteps among the leaves.

If beauty were a kingdom,
You would be its unseen Queen;
Not crowned by jewels,
But by the quiet grace that humbles Heaven.

I do not love you as men gather roses,
Fearing tomorrow's fading bloom.
I love you as the sun loves morning—
Without command, without end.

Should all the stars abandon night,
Should oceans forget the moon,
Still my heart would know its way to you,
As rivers remember the sea.

For you are not merely the flower I admire,
You are the garden where my soul has always lived.

And if Paradise should ask me
What miracle I carried from the earth,

I would whisper only your name.

~ Andy Lal