After Rising in Love

  I had thought, I'll just leave!
 Today it seems, dying too is more failure, old-fashioned!
 I'll die only after doing something good, not before!
 Why should I die with a small heart, a failed soul?
 Once born, one must live—what agony to accept that duty!
 Yet how strange! In the intoxication of living, everything goes on!
  
 Where there's life, there's suffering—
 Try to live a little less and that very suffering multiplies!
 How much more pain before I become a wall!
 How much more pain before I become human!
 Whatever the greatest suffering—let that come!
 Nothing else, will you give just a little pain?
  
 People have named it—love!
 Looking at it—terribly bad in the eyes!...certainly not good, bad-dwelling!
 What isn't good—the name 'love'!
 If living in a bad house lets me shout happily at the landlord,
 Why do I stay silent living in this bad-bad love?
 That dwelling of brick and stone—bad dwelling!
 That dwelling of heart-stone—bad dwelling indeed!
  
 : This girl! Is she idle? Has no work?
 What's she doing here all the time, wasting life? Huh?
 : Listen mister, life survives near you, don't you understand? Are you mad?
 Where would I go, leaving life behind? Hah!
 All your girlfriends and bundles of women,
 Damn them all, won't you leave this heart!
 If you won't go, take this curse—all happiness-birds will fly away!
  
 That I'm half-mad, you didn't understand before...isn't that so, tell me?
 In the rush for promotion, now completely mad too!...Thank you, sir!
 Laughing so much? Great fun, no?
 When I cry, you quite enjoy it, isn't that so, tell me?
 Drive me mad, then step aside—very brave!
 I won't leave, I'll sit right here beside you!
 Thinking, how shameless, no? Late though it is, you've caught on! If you'd understood before...I'd have been saved!
  
 This boy! What's wrong? Has someone caught your fancy?
 Ah, ah! If only someone would catch mine too!
 When the one whose hand I hold to learn to live pulls that hand away,
 Can you understand how it feels?
 Hey! Come here, just a little!
 I have such a longing,
 To sit you beside me and see you like before!
  
 You know, I'm terribly afraid to laugh now!
 The day that passes in laughter's joy, that very day I see fleeing fast!
 Like tissues—all these friends, you replace them! How can you?
 If only it were so, that life would pass with you alone,
 Yours too, beloved, would pass with me alone,
 Life then like a river...what more would we need?
  
 I hate you—because I love you!
 I love you—only because you are you!
 Hey! Tell me, what kind of hatred is such hatred?
 Well then, stay well...
 I'll stay away then,
 Bind someone in your love.
  
 Your house is in my heart—why is this heart so wretched?
 Am I talking nonsense? If that's so...error is life!
 No work all day long...again and again I think of you,
 Sleep breaks thinking of you, evening falls seeing you,
 Sleep won't come, you come instead!
 You know, the disease called 'thinking' has come, I'm the first patient of this thinking-disease,
 Thinking and thinking I'll die—such is this disease!
  
 Can you tell me why this dying love grows only at night!
 Dawn breaks, yet why won't sleep come still!
 This heart runs like clockwork—a dictator's,
 Love's dagger pierces vision, divides it,
 With what deception had this heart bound itself
 To cover my emptiness! Even the skeleton, I see, remains covered...
 Covering pain...is it so simple?
  
 Don't be angry, listen, I say,
 In this life you're my only friend.
 I'm your hobby kite,
 You're the reel, you're the string,
 I'm only as you are,
 I'll fly spinning, as you say.
 How much more will that wheel of sorrow's chariot turn? Enough now!
 My darling, shake off your anger, take both hands, let's go home!