Canción para un viejo amigo

Do you remember the times when, old friend,
the blue dawn burned in your mouth.
Drunk, Aphrodite laughed and toasted with you
leaving the scent of another body in your bed.
Where did those days run aground?
On what luminous beaches?

Fleeing from you and from the dawn, you escaped
seeking in a thousand bars the abracadabra
that stops time, but you returned
and found yourself waiting for you at home.
And the dawn, sincere killer,
brought its routine and its anchor.

Love is the stone that Sisyphus pushes.
The world the jingle of a frightened cat.
No one warned us that loving hurts,
that growing up is learning that to return,
and for almost everything, it's too late,
and what was not
our most loyal lover.

So let's toast now, old friend:
may this autumn end and solve the mystery
of the eclipse in your chest, as we still don't give up.
From the night we learned old spells
that help to conjure
the clock and its specters.

Sisyphus abandons his stone on the summit today
and the cat falls asleep tonight in your arms.
Perhaps they are right and loving hurts
but who the hell wants to go back
if what matters is learning
that what was not is not lost,
that what was not is not lost.

- Sisyphus: In Greek mythology, Sisyphus, son of Aeolus and Enarete, husband of Merope and founder and king of Ephyra, was condemned in hell to push a huge stone uphill on a steep slope, but before it reached the top of the hill the stone always rolled back down, and Sisyphus had to start over from the beginning. Doesn't love sometimes seem like that stone?