Hurto

Guardava quella casa, davanti a sé, e pensava alla misteriosa permanenza delle cose nella corrente mai ferma della vita. Stava pensando che ogni volta, vivendo con loro, si finisce per lasciare su di loro come una mano leggera di vernice, la tinta di certe emozioni destinate a scolorare, sotto il sole, in ricordi. 

- Tre volte all'alba, Alessandro Baricco

Sunset shines
A gift
ineffable
and bright

One must watch it almost
with devotion
for it won't last long

It's colors will become pale
and fade
diminishing
into the growing darkness

'Tis true

Living beside a tree top, as I do, I can say that it's true what they say about spring: birds are chasing each other, in pairs, showing otherwise hidden red and terracotta colors in their feathers, widening their wings out, or narrowing them up; some forcing others to bear their weight and stand still. Bees have begun visiting too, but, alas! No flowers have sprung yet.

En busca del tiempo perdido XVII

Algunas veces se busca en el cielo, en los símbolos que se estiman perennes o en las fotografías póstumas que antecedieron a la devastación. Para constatar que ya no existe.

Otras es preferible remover la tierra, lanzarle los corazones roídos de las manzanas y celebrar la lluvia.

Oxytocin

Or, all that is felt and lived and said is just both too complex and unpretentious to be spelled out.

To help us comprehend the magnitude of absence

What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee; 
What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage.        
          Ezra Pound

You’ll find labels describing what is gone:

an empress’s bones, a stolen painting

of a man in a feathered helmet

holding a flag-draped spear.

A vellum gospel, hidden somewhere long ago

forgotten, would have sat on that pedestal;

this glass cabinet could have kept the first

salts carried back from the Levant.

To help us comprehend the magnitude

of absence, huge rooms

lie empty of their wonders—the Colossus,

Babylon’s Hanging Gardens and

in this gallery, empty shelves enough to hold

all the scrolls of Alexandria.

My love, I’ve petitioned the curator

who has acquired an empty chest

representing all the poems you will

now never write. It will be kept with others

in the poet’s gallery. Next door,

a vacant room echoes with the spill

of jewels buried by a pirate who died

before disclosing their whereabouts.

I hope you don’t mind, but I have kept

a few of your pieces

for my private collection. I think

you know the ones I mean.

"In the Museum of Lost Objects" by Rebecca Lindenberg