Isn’t it amazing that one evening
sliding the bread into its paper sack
I start all over with the same old speech,

Oh really, she’s with somebody?
So she’s with somebody.
Is she really with somebody?

Surely it’s ridiculous maybe even scandalous
that I feel such overpowering envy
for the eleven-year-old son who’s dozing

There she is turned into a lollipop
a large egg-shaped lollipop,
not passed around, but twirled in the mouth,

To look at beauty and never make it yours.
If it weren’t this way you’d look at yourself
that is you’d have nothing more to look at,

Very simple love that believes in words,
since I cannot do what I want to do,
can neither hug nor kiss you,

When, thanks to the virtues of wine,
I let go of solid memory and a certain pleasure
seems almost real to me

You sit at the head of the table
heady with wine,
and hold forth,

One evening, after the sun (and not only the sun) had gone down in the west, the Jew went for a walk, that is to say he stepped out of his hut and went for a walk, the Jew, the son of a Jew, and his name went with him, his unspeakable name, as he walked and went on and went shuffling along

Snowfall, thicker and thicker,
dovecolored, like yesterday,
snowfall, as if you had been asleep just now.