In the desert, I met a child of stars. He asked for a sheep, and drew a box with bars. I drew a snake with a hat — he saw through the disguise. He said, "What is essential is invisible to the eyes." On ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur — the heart sees farther than sight. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux, and that was how he taught me light. On ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur — I heard it in the night: "I am responsible for my rose," and the words became his flight. The fox gave him the patience of taming: "Men only understand the things they tame." So the field grew quiet, and the wheat turned golden with the wound of one small name. Tame means time, and time means flame — and love learns shape slowly. He loved a rose on a volcanic world, proud, fragile, difficult to know. He left, then found that absence is not distance; it is the shape a tenderness can grow. I hear his step in the night train, and the desert keeps its silence. On ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur — the heart sees farther than sight. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux, and nothing else can make it right. On ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur — he said, and I still hear: "Love is not a matter of words, but of daily care." The stars still laugh like bells in sand... and I keep the sheep in his box.
