Like Wildflowers

William Faulkner's poem 'Une Ballade des Dames Perdues' (around 1920):

"I sing in the green dusk
Fatuously
Of ladies I have loved
- Ça ne fait rien!  Hélas, vraiment, vraiement

Gay little ghosts of loves in silver sandals
They dance with quick feet on my lute strings
With the abandon of boarding school virgins
While unbidden moths
Amorous of my seraglio
Call them with soundless love songs
A sort of etherial seduction

They hear, alas
My women
And brush my lips with ghostly kisses
Stealing away
Singly, their tiny ardent faces
Like wildflowers from some blown garden of dreams
To their love nights among the roses

I am old, and alone
And the star dust from their wings
Has dimmed my eyes
I sing in the green dusk
Of lost ladies - Si vraiment, vraiment charmant." 

P.S. Watercolor 'Happy Poppies' is from Debra and Dave Vanderlaan (source).
P.P.S. Source poem: here.