La novia ausente

Sometimes I look back on the times when I was a student
when I was a student and you were the beloved
who with your smiles gave out stars
to all the young men in that neighborhood.
Ah! the warm nights... Ah! the fantasy
of our twenty or so happy years,
when only your laughter could be heard
and I didn't have my gray hair.

We were arm in arm
and you sighed
because very close
I would say to you: 'My goodness...
do you see how the moon
is entangled in the pines
and its silver light
kisses you on the temple?
To the rare incantation
of night and silk
the leaves trembled
of the park, too,
and you asked me
to recite to you
this 'Sonatina'
that Ruben dreamed:
(Recited:)
The princess is sad! What's wrong with the princess?
Sighs escape from her strawberry mouth.
That she's lost her laughter, that she's lost her color.....
The princess is pale in her golden chair,
the keyboard of her sonorous key is mute
and in a glass, forgotten, a flower faints.'

What elves achieved what no longer exists?
What bony hand was spinning my ills?
And what haughty sorrow today has made me so sad,
Sad as the echo of the cathedrals?
Ah... I know, I know, I know... It was the absent bride,
the one who, as a student, loved me.
That when she died, I left a kiss on her forehead
because she was cold, because she left me.