After the Bridge Breaks

 
The years have passed leaving no trace at all,
you went with them, and will not return.
When one person dies another is born,
the sun rises, sets. Everything goes on as before.
I miss you, I search for you in my nights and days.


Where did those eyes disappear, that smile?
When you first laughed, I remember, I was filled with joy.
The day you hurt, tears came hard, though I didn't show them.
It takes great strength to cry before the one you love,
I understood that day. Now I understand,
I understood love, but never understood you.


When you were with me, I was so well,
I loved people, animals, the world...
You had become a fourth presence beyond all these,
whenever I looked at myself, I saw only you.
Tell me truly, when you touched me did you feel yourself? I did!


I miss you terribly, my joy is spent and sorrow has come,
only your memory returns and I weep in silence. Even holding a glass of water
I keep thinking, surely you will give me water to drink! Sitting forever
before a plate of rice, no one will mix it and feed me. No one remains
to show such innocent care. Living, accepting all this, hurts so much!


I still think of you and breathe warm breath into the air,
even writing so much I cannot quite explain what you were to me,
are, and will always be. If you never return again,
getting through this life will become a hard trial for me.


In smoky coffee bars I remember you.
There I am with my friends, we're all there,
only you are missing. Thinking this, my glasses fog up at once.
When someone gets very drunk,
they forget their polite and foolish adolescence.
As soon as evening falls I go down to the street and head straight for coffee bars,
I grope through memories, adolescence doesn't come there, youth comes and with it
inevitably you arrive. What fault is mine, tell me,
my dreams have kept me drunk!


Before you came this wise and ancient
world was new to me, unknown. Growing up
we learn mechanics and history quite easily,
literature, music, art... learning these isn't hard either,
and one can live wonderfully without quarreling with alcohol,
somehow this too gets set in the mind eventually. Life's meaning is mainly
screaming, beating, and lights-camera-action. Keeping disbelief
about Europe as an essential part of fashion, people who spend
the first part of life with such thoughts eventually pack up and leave for Europe.
...People grow up seeing all this.


Thinking about all reforms and reformers I grow
troubled, quarreling with all the world's disorder,
growing tired and old in dull, sad, dry coffee bars, just then
you came. In this small, cheap coffee bar
I tasted life's finest coffee. You know, the girl who sang
in an old woman's voice, she still comes regularly,
only I don't see you anymore. Since last Sunday it seems ages have passed...


You are not here. At evening the sky still blazes as before,
when the road ends perhaps the joy of travel dies,
so you sit quietly watching me cry! I know you are well!
Heart, feeling, memory, love—not caring for any of these,
you didn't have to newly learn the art of staying well, did you?


In my eyes your eyes are still blue as before,
ah, those eyes that looked at me
had smiled in twilight's bent light,
and some sweet harsh sunlight in the park listened secretly to our whispers.
Do you ever think of me sometimes?
...I don't know the answer to this, I only know this much,
I cannot forget you for even one day.


The boring days pass silently, yet...
That one can live without remembering you,
I myself once lived exactly that way,
even now I could easily live without thinking of you,
there's nothing humans can't do if they want...
I find it very hard to believe in such eternal consolations.


Come, tell me, whose hand shall I hold walking in tonight's moonlight?
You know I'm different from most people, so
it's more fitting that they not tolerate me, this is everyone's idea.
But who shall I talk with now?
When the path turns gray, where shall I come to stop?
In sorrow and pain, or when tears come hard,
to whom shall I go and try to live?
The sun no longer rises in my life,
youth is sweet, yet taking such care of myself I cannot bring this to mind.


All my days are of silence and anguish.
How terrible this endless silence is, you cannot even imagine!
Cold mist enters through my transparent shirt,
silence's sharp scream suddenly empties the heavy air,
hearing life's noble call I run down crooked and meaningless paths,
when dark days end each evening a hundred suns burn up mercilessly,
long after getting drunk I keep singing those old songs,
the songs that took our evenings on smooth paths to night's endless light.