The City

You said, “I will go to another place, to another shore.

Another city can be found that’s better than this.

All that I struggle for is doomed, condemned to failure;

and my heart is like a corpse interred.

How long will my mind stagger under this misery?

Wherever I turn, wherever I look

I see the blackened ruins of my life,

which for years on end I squandered and wrecked and ravaged”.

You will find no other place, no other shores.

This city will possess you, and you’ll wander the same

streets. In these same neighborhoods you’ll grow old;

in these same houses you’ll turn gray.

Always you’ll return to this city. Don’t even hope for another.

There’s no boat for you, there’s no other way out.

In the way you’ve destroyed your life here,

in this little corner, you’ve destroyed it everywhere else.