English

Love has changed the face of distances,
we have grown closer, blending into one another.
Your bosom has long been the place I wander in,
you have dwelt in my soul,
so come run with your barefoot children in the streets of my heart,
burn away every sea that separates us,
all the sands that besiege us.
You are the heart's homeland, its history —
remove
the last mark of the ancient royal wound
from your face.

Your weeping gray streets
inhabit my memory
and go with me to the cities where glory is,
they cry when we see the clean-washed streets,
the glad houses,
ask me:
How will our people
and our roads emerge from the age of tears?

The birds that migrated,
that migrate every day,
spoke to me of their love,
of their longing for the trees, their home,
of their fear of the dust of distances
and of the bitter season.
Once night has come do you hear the weeping of birds
do you hear it when the window of dream darkens on the shores
and the face of day burns out in the mirrors?

The faces that stab the eye are familiar,
Familiar the faces that carry warmth to the heart.
How can I reconcile the faces that stabbed me
and those that have preserved me?
And how to fight those scalpel faces making polite talk with me?
You, heart's homeland, like me
you lose your way in the crowd of faces,
bereft of understanding,
unable to choose.

I wish I had a boat,
and this darkness coming between us
I wish it was a sea,
so I could visit you.
I am the prince of lovers, mad about you,
I love you, can you deny my voice?

Can you deny my face?
Deny it, if you can —
my poems hung in the windows
along the housefronts
are aflame on the lips,
alive in the mountain springs.

The trains roll over my heart
when they run South
and my bones are littered over the Northern rocks.
Why, when I yearn, do the trains' eyes become my window,
the sound of the train my tears?
Why should I be torn apart,
then tossed away by exile?

The flay recedes,
gathers up its white robes,
here is the face of evening knocking at the windows,
stretching out in the long passageways,
lanterns can't stop the night from sleeping in the streets
and spreading over the city,
across its rivers, naked.
Wish I had a moon from the mills of your eyes
to expel from my world the seasons of darkness.

Every evening when night retrieves the substance of our longings,
the bird of yearning steals out of my body,
departs alone toward San " aa,
returns just before daybreak,
eyes wounded by the dust of separation,
in the heart a bloodied face,
vessels filled with the ashes of tenderness.

As I retire, each day, with myself,
lay down the burdens of self
and hoist the sail of memory,
I see you rising like blood in my veins,
like trees in my blood,
and I see the siege-wall that separates us
disintegrate,
our arms intertwine,
our bodies embrace.

To Frankfort I on Schobbas came,
Where dumplings were my food.
They have the best religion there:
Goose-giblets, too, are good.