Bonsai of Thoughts: Thirty-Six

1. I do not like you.
Not that I dislike you for someone else's sake.
It is you, specifically, that I do not like!

2. Sometimes the ocean itself comes to the thirsty,
sometimes the road itself brushes against the traveler's feet.
The ocean too needs the thirsty,
the road too needs the traveler.

3. Do not torment me so much,
if you can, tell me what my fault is.

One day even my own breath will betray me,
that day you will surely understand my pain.

4. If you want to know how black the evening darkness is,
ask those who have no homes.

5. From one desire spring forth a thousand desires.
What fault is mine, tell me! I have only one desire!

6. Why do you ask
whose hands fate will rise to today?
You know that even those who have no hands have fate!

7. Do not be so contemptuous!
Though we are poor today by fate's design,
we too know how to write a verse or two
that lay claim to immortality!

What has the poet to fear who has poetry!
Learn to fear the poet while there is still time!

8. You need not be happy to laugh.
You need to be accustomed to laughing.
I have seen many happy people cry.
Whether in laughter or tears, knowing people is such a burden!

9. How wonderfully this evening passed!
There was drizzling rain,
there was restless wind,
and you were with me.

In wind, in water, in you... I burned and crumbled to ash!

10. I do not weep because
I am growing old.
Rather I weep because
I must grow old... all alone.

11. Waiting for better times,
today we have lost our best times.

12. When the world returns to its own face,
why do you still write such poetry?
Then rather save the pen by throwing it away and take up the blade!

13. What am I searching for
when I have lost nothing at all!
Keeping strangers in my own home,
why do I seek my own door!

14. O pain!
Come to my mind, not my body!
My body has not yet learned to understand you!

15. Every time I saw father return home weeping,
I understood that father had returned from the fair.

God gave my father only tears for his eyes, no coins for his pocket.

16. The poet whose pen does not bleed—
even if an ocean of water gathers in his eyes, what use is it?
No poetry will emerge!

17. One who converses with his own heart,
whoever comes to converse with him
has neither love's attachment nor death's pretense.

18. Why do you still wait to hear something from the lips
of one who, despite waiting and waiting, could never hear anything from anyone's lips!

19. Is your sorrow more powerful
than the time that teaches you how to live!?

20. I know no one likes to hear me speak!
I also know no one stays well without hearing me speak!