Bonsai of Thoughts (Translated)

Thoughts in Bonsai: One Hundred and Forty-Four

1. Seeing me,
you've built yourself new homes,
and now you presume to teach me
how to tend a house!

2. Because I love you,
however much I keep track of myself,
I know that much more about you.

3. I am dying...
Yet far more agonizing than that—
you are in pain!

4. Poetry is greater than the beloved—
if you cannot accept this truth,
then even if you fall in love with a poet,
don't even by mistake stay with him!

5. At your invitation
I come to your house and see—
here you've arranged
for me to leave hungry too!

6. Without stealing,
can one really write?
Whatever a poet says,
it's all borrowed from your heart!

7. If you care for her
only when she hides away,
then she will keep hiding!

8. Without rising up
into the storm,
who has ever learned
to stop one?

9. I didn't come to you
to be humiliated.
That's why after being humiliated
I never left your side.

10. Let intellect remain
for the need to advance.
Let the heart remain
for the art of staying alive.

11. When I didn't come of my own will,
what's this reluctance when it's time to go?

12. Whoever seems good and beautiful to behold,
everyone stays busy...extinguishing their light.

13. Not the crown first—
save your own head.
You have only one head...if that survives,
you'll find many crowns!

14. How overwhelming
the desire to renounce can be—
if you want to see this,
just enter domestic life!

15. Day after day you taught me to speak with such care,
and today you say I'm forbidden to open my mouth!

16. He leaves the temple
leaving the temple behind...in the temple itself!
The poor soul never found the temple,
though he spent his whole life inside one!

17. In search of roses
I went to the garden.
Today I see—
only the thorns keep track!

18. Evening lamp.
Wick and vessel, everything's there,
only the oil is missing;
so in my house, evening becomes night!

19. Bird songs or flower fragrance—
while trying to understand,
I find both hearing and smell are destroyed!

20. Dead men have no minds,
that's why I long for death!
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