La Novia Ausente

Sometimes I go over those hours
when I was a student and you were the one I loved
who with your smiles scattered stars
to all the guys in that neighborhood.
Ah! the warm nights... Ah! the fantasy
of our twenty happy springs,
when only your laughter could be heard
and I didn’t have my gray hair yet.

We walked arm in arm
and you sighed
because so close
I’d say: "My dear...
do you see how the moon
gets tangled in the pines
and its silver light
kisses your temple?"
At the strange spell
of night and jasmine
the leaves trembled
in the park, too,
and you asked me
to recite for you
this "Sonatina"
that Rubén dreamed:
(Recited:)
"The princess is sad! What could be wrong with the princess?
Sighs escape from her strawberry lips.
She has lost her laughter, she has lost her color...
The princess is pale in her golden chair,
the keys of her harpsichord are silent
and in a glass, forgotten, a flower is wilting."

What spirits achieved what no longer exists?
What bony hand wove my troubles?
And what lofty sorrow has made me so sad,
sad like the echo of cathedrals?
Ah!... I know, I know... It was the absent bride,
that one who loved me when I was a student.
When she died, I left a kiss on her forehead
because she was cold, because she was leaving me.