Shadow

 
I have loved being in love;
maybe that's why it has not loved me.
That's how a handsome lover
behaves with a lovestruck child.
I've loved the sun too much
and I'm fed up with begging
at the doors of the days.
I've become like a fern-leaf
that prefers to live in the shade
rather than to bare the sun.
And that's why my trouble builds a house
in which lamp- and sunlight
have been tempered for the eyes
and where the sober lines of a face
and where the serenity of a friendship stand
as the shadow of a tree
arched
above my head.

© Transl. Lepus