By Jovensel Ngamaleu
Silence and absence
Make love more intense.
I cannot drown in your tears.
To cry is perhaps to love;
We never knew how to love.
We always love badly and we waste our time.
Here we are again buried
In the sheet of the half-light;
The eyes will tire of seeing us.
This night the world swarms near the hotel;
But no one enters and no one leaves.
The headlights are watching us as we pass.
We confess our weaknesses and our passiveness:
To love is a theater.
I am the ice which deplores you.
I do not know how to love any more…
A homeless approaches our refuge
And we disappoint him without shame:
No room to offer to him; I have thus only you.
He turns around, sadder, and goes away slowly
Like your love for me.
It could be that you are so rich in love
And I am not; for you would love
While I fear to disgust thee
We were ashamed to walk;
We crossed the street badly;
Not with hands in hands, as before
But in tatters
To bid each other farewell silently
Without looking at each other,
Without seeing each other
To move away.
Each link evaporates in the slow crowd.
You were drying up like these plants
Of the precarious seasons.
I am your desert without oasis!
