Duk Nowi Inna

Stay without sorrow, be happy, I still love you in secret,
regret bears no fruit now, through tears; it is too late for you now
“there was no fault,” you said, the day you came to realise it, you came back
that day it happened too fast, and you, I think, will grieve even more than me
my life, in this existence, can no longer be joined with yours
stay without sorrow, be happy, I still love you in secret

Angry over the smallest thing that day,
you left me and went somewhere far away,
enduring tears, only because of the sorrow,
they never lessen in my two eyes
“there was no fault,” you said, the day you realised it, you came back
that day it happened too fast, and you, I think, will grieve even more than me
my life, in this existence, can no longer be joined with yours
stay without sorrow, be happy, I still love you in secret

The words your two eyes spoke, I understood, truly,
that you no longer, even barely, loved me,
filling my eyes with tears, wounding the gaze, it was you who deceived, that day
“there was no fault,” you said, the day you realised it, you came back
that day it happened too fast, and you, I think, will grieve even more than me
my life, in this existence, can no longer be joined with yours
stay without sorrow, be happy, I still love you in secret

This is a gentle, self-effacing heartbreak song, and its whole gesture is generosity. Stay without sorrow, be happy, the singer tells the one who left, because I still love you, in secret. Regret bears no fruit now, he says; the tears come too late. She eventually realised there had been no real fault and came back, but by then it was already too late, and he suspects she will end up grieving even more than he does.

The wound is that nothing can be undone. Angry over the smallest thing, she once left him and went far away, and since then the tears have never lessened in his eyes. He keeps returning to the same quiet truth: in this bhava, this lifetime, his life can no longer be joined with hers, no matter how much either of them might now wish it.

The clearest sight comes at the end. The words your two eyes spoke, he says, I understood perfectly, that you no longer loved me even a little, and it was you who, filling my eyes with tears, deceived me that day. And yet he lays no curse on her; he simply repeats his blessing, stay without sorrow, be happy. It is heartbreak carried with a kind of tired grace, a man who has been let down choosing to wish the other person well anyway.