Post-Delirium Dialogue

 
Another day passed, you didn't come.
You never come, you have never come. 
You love to play hide-and-seek disguised as mirages.
This spring is slipping away, the old winter-wounded nights
will end in a few more days.
Then more springs will come, yet no one will arrive.


You won't come, I know.
Besides, I no longer want you to come.
I am weary, today I have bolted shut the familiar latch of waiting.
No one needs to come to me anymore. Let no one come.
Day by day, bit by bit, room by room
the web of hope, of tenderness I had woven...
I thought, when you came I would show you
how many hours I've been waiting!


...Today all that is meaningless.
I've burned all the letters, everything has turned to ash.
No pages left in the diary, all empty.
Today my blood has clotted, no longer racing here and there.
It will never flow anywhere again in love's warmth.
Hour after hour, day after day, month after month, year after year passed then,
yet still I waited for you. You didn't understand.


I didn't understand I was making a mistake.
This isn't devotion, this isn't love. 
All this is mere stubbornness!
Now the time has come to shake off all that and become human.
Today I'll wash away and bid farewell to all that excess of living emotion.


Perhaps I had seated myself on a goddess's throne!
I thought maybe, if I remained absolutely pure, simple, honest
then I could win your love! Now I understand,
whatever else self-discipline may achieve, love doesn't work that way.


I will knock on no one's door anymore.
I was wrong. Time passed in mistaken understanding. Today I know,
this can't be called love. Voluntary slavery isn't love.
By endangering myself that way, smearing shame on my body,
what kind of love was I seeking all these days!


From today, except to myself, I am dead to everyone else.
I will strangle and kill all those emotions!
Then, spreading honey-poison on my body, I'll become a riddle and revel in the game.
Whatever petals exist in the name of love,
I'll tear them off one by one and throw them away.
I'll become the incurable fever in their bodies,
burning them to destruction from afar.


I follow no rules,
I acknowledge neither community nor clamor.
Against the darkness I'll burn myself like a star and blaze bright like those distant stars.
Dawn will never come to my room again.
...There is no night or dawn left in my life today!


I am the architect of my own laws, I am love's ritual. 
From today, burning myself each moment,
I'll make love more endangered than myself!
I'll forget tears, I'll forget laughter,
I'll forget sorrow... I'll keep thinking,
happiness—what's that all about! I'll make peace irrelevant in an instant!
I'll become an ancient banyan tree, head held high,
standing motionless in one place, a silent witness.


I am senseless, I am speechless,
I am unburdened, I am an ever-wakeful soul.
I will lull to sleep
the eternally waiting sentries sitting by the roadside.
I—loving, loving...
will die, will burn, will become ash if need be—
but never again will I be obedient water.