Classic Poem

Friend! My friend! You make me cry like a flower blooming at my love's grave.
Friend, who makes me glad as one I encountered in the birdless desert's night.
You are the fragrance of white bones that breaks out of an old grave and pierces up to heaven.
You are a song of hope, yet without hope, which one sings through the fallen flowers picked up to make a wreath in the other branches.

Friend! My friend, who cries over a broken love.
No tears can possibly make fallen blossoms bloom again on their old branch.
Do not shed your tears on the fallen flowers, but on dust below the flowering bush.

Friend! My friend!
No matter how good the fragrance of death, you cannot kiss the lips of the white bones.
Don't enmesh the grave with golden song; place a blood-stained banner on the grave.
Yet a spring wind tells you how dead earth is moving through the song of a poet.

My friend, I am ashamed. When I hear your songs how shamed I am, how I tremble.
This is because I am listening to your song all alone, keeping myself away from my love.