Friends Poem by José Tolentino Mendonça

We look at those strangers
whom we love and who love us
and they're always adolescents
afraid and alone
with no practical sense
with scant notion of the threat or renunciation
that weighs on the light
careless and intense in their devotion
to what's fleeting

One day we wake up sad with their sadness
since the fortuitous meaning of the fields
explains with other words
what makes their eyes incomparable

But the greater impression is one of happiness
that can't be grasped
and is therefore tenuous, mysterious
the way perhaps all love is

Translation: 2006, Richard Zenith