First Love, Last Love

(Tình đầu tình cuối - Trần Thiện Thanh)

Is it first love or is it last,

when one day someone has gone away?

Is it first love or the love that comes after,

when the hurt doesn’t know how long it will stay?

One day I got to be loved,

then one day I’m left alone, so quietly sad—

knowing emptiness, knowing sleepless nights,

and tasting bitterness.

And life is like a dream—

when we love, who knows what comes after?

First love often ferments into pain,

so sometimes a loving heart bleeds.

At the start, who knows the end?

Then comes the shame, the drowning regret.

And first love becomes only a memory…

Oh love—oh love—where are you now?

How can I kiss your messy hair?

Oh love—oh love—where are you now?

How… how can we still be “two”?

Oh love—oh love—where are you now?

Is that your name upon a gravestone?

Oh love—oh love—where are you now,

so first love becomes last love—breaking us apart?

Is it first love or is it last,

when life is nothing but wounds?

Is it first love or the love that follows,

or just a dream through white-sleepless nights?

It’s only a dream—

and people can only watch it drift away:

sometimes bewildered, sometimes bound together,

and sometimes storms.

Though love is fragile,

when we love, our hearts are green.

Though love is beautiful like a painting,

a painting alone still isn’t what the heart desires.

This earthly love is still too vast,

and this earthly road still feels too short—

so a whole lifetime becomes nothing

but holding hardships… and dreaming.