tonight i can write

tonight i can write the saddest lines
write, for example, ' the night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'

the night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

tonight i can write the saddest lines.
i loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

through nights like this one i held her in my arms.
i kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

she loved me, sometimes i loved her too.
how could one not have loved her great still eyes.

tonight i can write the saddest lines
to think that i do not have her.
to feel that i have lost her.

to hear immense night, still more immense without
her.
and the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

what does it matter that my love could not keep her.
the night is starry and she is not with me.

this is all. in the distance someone is singing. in the distance.
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

my sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer
my heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

the same night whitening the same trees
we, of that time, are no longer the same.

i no longer love her, that is certain, but maybe i love her.
love is so short, forgetting so long.

because through nights like this one
i held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

though this be the last pain that she has made me suffer
and these the last verses that i write for her.

- from twenty love poems and a song of depair
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