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.