Thoughts in Miniature: Eight

1. Tell me, why do you light lamps the moment night falls?
Will you never once look at your true face in the darkness?

2. In reply to my letter, send me just a blank sheet of paper—
the paper touched by you is my dictionary of love.

3. Incense grieves in the stench of mixed corpses,
let us meet then in the graveyard!

4. Know this: drinking wine doesn't make one drunk,
being drunk means perhaps one doesn't drink wine at all!

5. There are so many wounds on the wound that I can't finish counting them. Could you help me count them?

6. The harder I tried to embrace him with all my strength, the more he pushed me away with double the force.
Yet in old age he goes around telling people I never learned how to hold on!

7. The flowers I bought and brought for you—
when I arrived, I saw the very same flowers had already been sent to your home by someone else.
A person can be this unlucky!

8. How desperately I clung to you once I had you,
no one knows how much I had to strive just to win you!

9. Old resentments lie buried under new resentments,
this, perhaps, is what they call love's final fate!

10. Writing and writing, I burn to ashes,
to write, one needs to burn.
Writing and writing, I cut myself,
cutting and cutting, I discard myself.
Writing and writing, I only increase the agony,
my written letters are really consolation in disguise!

11. In this life I've stored an ocean of waves in my chest,
in the next life I'll surely prove myself your special someone!

12. All night my heart burns with terrible fever,
you are the one whose fragrant body-mind brings me peace!

13. —O poet, name me such an intoxication that I may forget her!
—O lover, I know of no intoxication greater than poetry!

14. Even if the body dies, keep the soul alive; if the soul dies, don't make the mistake of trying to save the body!

15. Again and again you've come to my court to defeat me,
yet all I have for shield and sword are just a handful of words!

16. When you feel like crying, all of you come to my house together,
I'm certain that even together you won't be able to cry as much as I can!

17. —O visitor, you look terribly weary, please have a glass of water.
—Poet, first let me quench my thirst by hearing your poetry.

18. You who have been going on about love all this time,
where are your names in love's documents?

19. From the day I learned to write poetry, my joy equals my sorrow and my sorrow equals my joy.

20. Once you learn to write poetry, there's no need to visit mountains and seas,
then the mountains and seas themselves come to the poet seeking rest!