1. Life has given me so much suffering that now, even holding flowers in my hand, I find myself loving the thorns instead.
2. Be well, you. Remember this: to live is itself to be well.
3. So habituated have I grown to sorrow, worn down by it again and again, that I no longer know where joy is meant to be found.
4. Look at my face, my gaze... look closely. I bear the likeness of a person who has lost everything.
5. I see you all the time. So why should I trouble myself to go all the way to your address?
6. Why have you grown so stingy with your neglect of late? I cannot subsist on so little!
7. Your knife is your tongue; mine is my eyes. Look well—then you will understand.
8. All joy fades in time, sooner or later, but the joy of being able to weep—that never fades.
9. My old self seeks your old self. Where did you hide it away in a single moment! I can scarcely believe it!
10. Without dangling happiness before me, return those sorrows of mine that were given to you freely, years ago.
11. What value has your happiness, tell me? You cannot weep as I do!
12. Love shackles human hands and feet, makes a prisoner of the bird of the sky in its cage.
13. When I look at you, I wish to live one more day. Yet I cannot refrain from looking. For years I have fought against this helplessness.
14. My vast idleness and your busy mind! Why does your time call for a woman? It is altogether wrong!
15. If life must be spent in that busyness and labor, why dream at all, tell me, of clay houses and firewood?
16. Two and two make four. But three and one make four as well! Even if I lose, think hard—this game is not yours to win!
17. Greedy for devotion, demanding reverence, will you go that far having cast aside the offering?
18. Refuse the Himalayas— Seek them, and they become dream!