you ask if I will not write
a love song for you
if I will not sing of true love
and your beauty and tenderness;
you ask if I will not
hold out the stars to you
and sing of fictions like the soul
and the moon's sway over our eternal beings;
no, sweetheart -
I will not gather roses from the verse of centuries
and I will not hold out to you the songs of yore
and thoughts and conceits repeated
until the very lies have become the truth -
but of true love always I shall sing for you
O sweetheart mine who in my company endures
ordinary words and no stardust rhetoric;
O sweet and innocent love
a true love song I sing always for you;
inherited verses and worn-out conventions
I renounce before you;
and in my song
there are no
hand-me-down ways in love and passed-on ideas
no hyperbole and no sweet lies and fantasies
but I sing a true song of love
a true song of love I sing for you -
O beloved mine who has to do
without the routine verses

there is desire
and there is the flesh
there is nature
and there are the compulsive drives
and there are you and I
and the life given us these years

and so I sing my true love song for you
sweetest beloved;
you dearest beloved
who endures my ordinary words
for you I sing,
O you so cherished and much beloved,
my true love song
always for you
who have to do
without the routine verses