Being with you
is being in the same country with you,
living in one country with you.
However I am alone now,
you are everywhere in the country,
you become everything;
the passages, the buildings,
the monuments, the ruins;
the trees, the fields, the rivers,
and the mountains;
the language that belongs here;
the voice from the passer-bys;
the accents they speak;
you diffuse into them.
However I am alone now,
as far as I live in
the same country with you
I am being with you
everyday.

Walking through this city
I remember I used to
turn around and smile
when I heard your voice
calling my name keenly
through the stranger sea.
Every time I heard
I learned it by heart.
But many times now
I hear many familiar voices
say my name as they used to
and I still turn around and smile
only every time when I do
the only voice that I do miss
in the familiar stranger sea
is yours.

I do not wish to go across
the borders of this country
however we are separated
by the passages, the buildings,
the monuments, the ruins;
the trees, the fields, the rivers,
and the mountains
that make borders and counties;
by imagining you living on
the other side of the same country,
however we are separated,
on this side of the country,
every time I glance,
every time I look upon
the same sky we share
I fall for you.

There are many places
we said we wanted to go to
together when we were young
but it's only that hill I managed
to walk up - by myself.
Many nights I reached its top
to watch its unchanging valley
where it kept a wish of mine
that we might come together
to walk this hill and
going to a place where
we could rest our head
like the house I return to
every night with
my fatigued body.

Now I don't go to that hill
anymore because I am old
and you are gone far away,
only I will try to look for it
from my window or others'
where I can see many hills,
houses, fields, ruins, and
trees, and I cannot find
that hill of course, but
only look in the distance
and all these distances
become the place I run to
when the dark rises, when I want
your ghost to come
to warm my winter sky
and watch
my summer stars.