English
To a Friend Who Is Faithless
My darling, in whom I take all my pride and joy,
may you never be a stranger to my grief, only its friend.
You who befriend my enemy and shun your own friend,
you who war against kindness and oppose my contentment.
You whose only concern in my heart is staying true to you,
you whose heart wants nothing but to be cruel to me.
You who wipe the sorrow from my eyes yet deepen my longing,
you, my quarrelsome, faithless love.
My need takes pride in you from head to foot,
and head to foot I am trampled beneath your disdain.
What looks like my heart's complaint is really gratitude,
yet even that is undone by my dull, useless luck.
The day I chose you above everyone alive,
I said: do not choose another in my place.
A whole life has passed away in being faithful to you,
and all I ever asked of you was your sorrow.
The strange thing is you still won't soften in faithfulness,
stranger still, you grow only harder in your cruelty.
Back when your alchemy worked no transformation,
even my worthless copper had its full worth.
Now that the stone on your road sells at the price of jewels,
my gold has been leveled flat with the dust.
If you do all this knowingly, then I rejoice;
but if you have no idea how I am, then woe is me.