A simple frown in the dust

 
Have you seen tonight's moon?
How it drifts in half-light, leaving the stars' enchantment,
spilling moonbeams on the earth's skin...
bathing bodies in such tender light—
how blessed this world is, tell me!


Cool breezes all around... some silence,
wild penance for old sins in night's breast,
What peace this is! What calm! Oh, oh!
Why don't you see it?
You who wander so much through imagination's realm,
why not touch the moon and dive deep?


Tell me truly, do you love me?
If you say 'yes', promise me one thing...
someday, will you give me an entire full-moon night
from your busy time?


Nestled in that night's shadows, holding both your hands,
I'll walk slowly, speak endless delirium...
on such an intoxicating night we two will be intimate!
You're thinking, perhaps, this girl is so foolish!


Have I truly asked for far too much?
Can so many things in life really be bought back
as we wish, even at great price?
You're thinking, what strange talk this is!


For each pain I felt from your neglect,
can you pay its price?
All my weary hours from your thousand harsh words—
will you return them, counting one by one, paying much, much more?


When all your own needs are finished,
whatever time remains, that stale time every day
you fling at my face, like throwing
leftover rice when you see a cat! Can you price that?


Life passes so busily, doesn't it, tell me?
All those hours that slipped away just like this in vain work,
I got not even their worth from you!
Meanwhile I see, as soon as one hour's debt is cleared,
another hour pounces!


That new hour...
calculates every breath, gathered and gleaned!
At day's end, one envelope, with a blank page.
That's all, finished! Hands it over, considers it a burden, sends it away!


Life runs out... yet so many half-melted moments
just lie there... unseen, unrecognized!
At day's end, to take along,
there remains only one broken, tuneless violin!


Why do you calculate so much? Will all calculations ever add up?
Can every account be accounted for?
Does the sun really rise after every night ends?
Sometimes I wonder, perhaps
it would have been better if I were them instead of me?


So many precious things—their price is false from start to finish!
Oh, humanity! With money, how much they buy,
and all their lives they nurse that very lack!


What should I do, tell me!
I'm terrible at calculations!
What's precious, what's cheap—
I still haven't learned to tell!


My accounting has stopped...
right there. Sometimes I think,
it's fine as it is, whatever else may be,
does moonlight fill the belly?
What fault is yours, really, tell me!