There’s no forgetting (sonata)
Were you to ask me where I’ve been
I would have to say, “There comes a time”.
I would have to tell how dirt mottles the rocks,
how the river, running, runs out of itself:
I know only what left the birds bereaved,
the sea forsaken, or my sister weeping.
Why so many places, why does one day
cling to another? Why does a night’s blackness
drain into the mouth? Why the dead?
Were you to ask where I come from, I would have to talk with shattered things,
with all too bitter tools,
with massive festering beasts, now and then,
and with my grief bitten heart.
Unremembered are those who crossed over
and the pale dove asleep in oblivion,
only tears faces,
fingers at the throat,
and whatever falls from the leaves:
the darkness of a burnt-out day,
a day flavored with our curdled blood.
Here I have violets, swallows,
we want anything and it appears
in that long train of impressions
that marks the passing of kindness and time.
But let’s go no further than the teeth,
we won’t chew on husks heaped up by silence,
because I don’t know how to answer:
there are so many dead,
and so many levees the red sun has cloven
and so many heads than knock against hulls,
and so many hands that shut up kisses,
and so many things I want to forget.
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