![]() From "Theme of Farewell"
In you all deaths gather, all the broken glasses, the sere pages, the derangements of thought, they gather in you, guilty of all deaths, incomplete and guilty, in the wake of every mother, in your wake, motionless. They gather there, in your weak hands. The apples of this market are death, these poems retreat into their grammar, in the hotel room, in the hut of what does not join, souls without rest, aged lips, bark ripped from the trunk. They are dead. They gather there. They failed, the operation failed, they failed. The place was motionless, the word obscure. That was the place we agreed on. Goodbye, memory of the sparkling nights, goodbye, big smile, the place was there. To breathe was a darkness shutters had made, a primitive state. Silence and desert were switching positions and we were talking to a lamp. The place was that one. The trolleys rarely passed. Venus was returning to her hut. Out of the warrior throat, episodes broke free. We didn't say anything more. The place was that one. It was there that you were dying. Translated by Translated by Susan Stewart and Patrizio Ceccagnoli
From Volume 191, Number 3, December 2007 Copyright © The Poetry Foundation |