The Sorrow of a One-Streamed River

This love I bear for you, so vast—
yet you belong to someone else!
This heart has learned to bear it all... I only wonder,
O God, if you won't grant love in return,
why give such fierce power to love at all?
I've endured quite enough, I think—
the wounds that were to come, I've felt them at that bend in the road!
When you didn't come at the path's beginning, running late,
when I yearned for you desperately, yet
not even a scattered drop of you came my way,
tell me, was that suffering any less?


Then what more do you call suffering?
However much fear arrives with each blow, however many days pass in pain,
I too have learned some moves in advance!
Is this perhaps less than all that?
Waiting at that bend in the road, I never once grew weary,
weariness never settled in these eyes or across this body—
resting now and then, but always sleepless eyes kept watch,
lest you come to that bend and turn away, forgetting, down another path...
In that very fear I sat in silence, keeping still.
No lamenting song was anywhere to be heard—
I was there alone, just me.
Tell me, isn't such cruel torment still torment?
Or can all this be done with a smiling face?


Have you ever spent a night or two...
soaking your pillow, waiting for me or someone else?
No, you haven't—such things don't suit you, I know that well enough!
Then how could you understand... the burning of watching the road?
I held your hand loosely then... yes, loosely!
If you want to go, then go—I won't hold you back.
And if you do leave...
then measure it out precisely... I won't let you feel even a sliver of pain!
Not hidden away, no—I'll keep it tenderly, with such care!
What belongs where should stay where it looks right!


Even today I am so clumsy!
Love... it remains so strange to me!
I live only circling around you!
Have you ever looked inside... to see who dwells within these ribs?
Perhaps you haven't... that other me is yours alone!
You're thinking, I suppose, what a web of enchantment you've woven!
You've conquered through tricks, through words, through pretense!
You must be thinking I'm trapped too deeply?
Tell me, who conquered whom? What is this enchantment?
The rope of the heart—I bound it loose
long ago, ready to let go!


These days I think myself terribly devious!
Want to know why?
Well, let me tell you, listen...
When you find some other song or writing,
someone else's recitation or anything else that captures that mind of yours,
when you feel it, how easily you say "I love this,"
sometimes going mad, soaring...
it makes me feel awful then!
I suffer... not because you've loved something else.
The pain comes when I think...
Why can't I steal away that "I love" of yours... don't I know how?
The thing that slips quietly from your lips and steals away that bit of love...
When will I become like that? When will I too be able to do that?
When will I be able to become one of your "I loves"?


Will I ever manage it in this life?
I am poor, I have nothing at all... only one disease—of loving!
What can I offer to win your love, tell me?
How quietly they snatch away that love of yours!
But look at me... what a ridiculous person I've become... absolutely worthless!
You don't tell me anything... instead I'm the one loving and loving... burning you out!
This one-sidedness of love burns, makes me weep... devours every thought!
Then neither my existence nor my being has anything left to say!