At the Hour of Loss

Each time, in how many ways, how variously our small
mountain peaks of pride and hurt have broken and mended—thinking of this,
the mistake we made becomes clearer with each passing day.
When all these little crests of wounded pride went racing toward
that sky-touching mountain, neither you nor I
ever understood!

Pride! What can it not do!
Even death—it teaches us to accept with silent gaze,
to shoulder stone-heavy grief
and take it all without a tear!
And this was merely a casual, neglectful turning away!

All storms may indeed calm someday,
but caught in the storm's grip, damage remains just damage,
and with each returning tempest, it's finally exhausted
into heaps of ruin.

Blow after blow, until one day even hurt
feels terribly familiar.
Then you don't need to pay it
special attention anymore.

Instead of watching this battle of accusations,
could you have seen my struggle
to make you a little more mine?

Couldn't we have forgotten all these complaints and reproaches,
understood each other completely,
and written a story of love
just a little longer?

Or was it never written anywhere—that anything of ours
could emerge from our separate selves, separate you and I...
that we were meant to become us!

Not everyone's happiness is written on their forehead.
Some joys come as unexpected guest-birds,
paint a few made-up pictures on memory's canvas,
then return to their true address!
Come, what's in that! Fate never gives everyone the chance
to live a whole life guarding love,
staying with the one they love!
I've accepted myself as one such person.

If you truly loved me,
then amidst all the day's busyness, or
wrapped in some solitary moment,
if I never once came to your mind, nor should have—
don't practice this small deception with yourself!
Don't forget, I loved too; you weren't alone... if you loved at all!

In this silence, when I'm completely lost,
whether a single drop of your tears will be reserved for me—
I won't trouble myself with that doubt anymore.
But at the moment of my vanishing, I'll want to see you once!
Now learn to live alone, beloved!