To live is to build a ship and a harbor
at the same time. And to complete the harbor
long after the ship has sunk.

translated by Yehuda Amichai & Ted Hughes

Love at the closing of our days
is apprehensive and very tender.
Glow brighter, brighter, farewell rays
of one last love in its evening splendor.

Blue shade takes half the world away:
through western clouds alone some light is slanted.
O tarry, O tarry, declining day,
enchantment, let me stay enchanted.

The blood runs thinner, yet the heart
remains as ever deep and tender.
O last belated love, thou art
a blend of joy and of hopeless surrender.

translated  by Vladimir Nabokov

You’ll stand waiting in the rain your eyelashes will grow long
Dusk will descend in a little while
To the water that runs softly to the lonesome asphalt roads
You will walk and your eyelashes will get wet tenderly
And love will accompany you
From the marble sidewalk

“I love you so,” the girl
Who has made a kite out of her heart will say
That girl who sheds leaves when you steal a look

A dawdler, you will walk
Your heart seething with flighty passions
On your lapel a flower that offers all of its fragrance
Inquiring into the loves that have an unhappy ending

The desk will study you, the water glass will be full
When that young girl awakes now

translated by Talat S. Halman

ancient dinosaur
too sensitive for this world
with regret in heart
goes lumbering off to lie
with his own vanishing breed

like Cortez my ships
were burned just after landing
behind me the sea
in front an empty landscape
which way do I choose to go