loving you,
is like walking
on a landmine;
suited with a
vest decorated in
dangerous explosives

one wrong step-
                          and it goes 'kaboom',
just like ticks
of warning from
my puny heart

                                    you hold a machine
                                   and prepared to shoot;
                                   as if I've not experienced
                                   the after effects of this war,

just so I could win,
the peace treaty
of your affection

you were my sunshine
i was your sunflower

i mean, you were my lifeline
and i filled you with power

and now that you've left me you shine just as bright
but don't you know that flowers die without light?

there is no need
to throw grenades
at me; when I am
already a living,
ticking timebomb

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 hate it when -
the sun rejected
love from the cloud;
and made it
cry every day
during the monsoon,

And yet
the sun still tries
to shine brightly
over the clouds
as if the storm
never happened.