Let's talk about the girl,
who wasn't ready for the nights events,
ashamed of the fact that she didn't know the right words, or gestures to prove herself worthy.

Let's talk about the boy,
keeping a pace comparable to roaring waves,
inviting himself into a place he wasn't welcome.

Let's talk about the word "please",
how it fell off his tongue like cinnamon; coating the surface of her uncertainty with promises of a tomorrow.

Let's talk about the street lights,
radiating like a warning,
whispering: run.

Let's talk about regret,
humming her to sleep,
reminding her of the view from a dark street
screaming: you deserve more than this.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.


translated by W.S. Merwin

I'm sorry if I resemble a sparrow
With a fear of flight
When I shield my abdomen
With apologetic arms.

As if my trembling elbows
Could avert your glances
Long enough to distract you
From your examination of
The inadequacy
That lay beneath.

I'm sorry if my fingers stumble
Upon yours when you
Glide them across
Skin that's already been
Rewarded in stripes
And metal kisses.

I only say sorry
Because If I could,
I'd place my regret
In a envelope
Addressed to your eyes,
Entitled the parts of me you
Dare not see.

The parts that make me
Me.

maybe love is to watch a thousand winters pass, and still stand by his side because you know he's made of spring

this virulent tongue of yours
ought to be split in twos
one for you to choke on
condemning your insides to disintegrate
and the other left a souvenir for my keeping
paraded for the others as a blatant threat

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,
    So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
    So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.