Paciencia

Last night, my eyes saw you again;
last night, I had you by my side again.
Why should I have seen you if, after all,
we were two strangers looking at the past!
You're not the same, nor am I the same... .
The years! ... Life!... Who knows what!...
Once and for all, it's better to be frank:
I and you can't go back to yesterday.

Patience...
Life is like that.
We wanted to get together out of pure selfishness
and the same selfishness shows us different.
Why pretend?
Patience...
Life is like that.
None of us is guilty, if there is any guilt.
That's why the hand I gave you in silence
did not tremble at parting.

We'll pretend it was all a dream,
that it was a lie to have sought us out;
so that we can, in good conscience, have the consolation
of continuing to believe that we haven't changed.
I have a portrait of those twenty years
when you were the neighborhood's familiar sun.
I want to see you always as beautiful as you were then:
what happened last night was just a dream.