That's the way it goes, the way it was and always will be.
Promise to meet in cafés on closing day.
Standing on the wrong side of a bridge.
Between thumb and index finger, like burning ashes,
the wrongly gathered phone number.
Parks too wet, hotels too full, Paris too far.
Love as a multiple of misunderstandings.
Clumsy words like y'know at hand and -
ignoring the laws of good taste
and intellect, wanting so much to write
that of the city in which you first met
there is a map, on which a kiss
was recorded and barely a kiss it was.
Translated by John van Tiel