As the future ripens in the past,
so the past rots in the future --
a terrible festival of dead leaves.

We don't know how to say goodbye,
We wander on, shoulder to shoulder
Already the sun is going down
You're moody, and I am your shadow.
Let's step inside a church, hear prayers, masses for the dead
Why are we so different from the rest?
Outside in the graveyard we sit on a frozen branch.

That stick in your hand is tracing
Mansions in the snow in which we will always be together.

You will hear thunder and remember me,
And think: she wanted storms. The rim
Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson,
And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.

The evening sky is gold and vast.
I’m soothed by April’s cool caress.
You’re late. Too many years have passed, -
I’m glad to see you, nonetheless.

Come closer, sit here by my side,
Be gentle with me, treat me kind:
This old blue notebook – look inside –
I wrote these poems as a child.

Forgive me that I felt forsaken,
That grief and angst was all I knew.
Forgive me that I kept mistaking
Too many other men for you.

This cruel age has deflected me,
like a river from this course.
Strayed from its familiar shores,
my changeling life has flowed
into a sister channel.
How many spectacles I've missed:
the curtain rising without me,
and falling too. How many friends
I never had the chance to meet.

I have a lot of work to do today;
I need to slaughter memory,
Turn my living soul to stone
Then teach myself to live again.