blurred with smeared make-up
and two beads in their sockets
as fish have.
Your dewy lips I recollect
sucking my breath
in intermittent phases
that have dried up.
Mist shrouds strips of reality
and from the drawer
your bones emerge
held together by my shallow sighs.
In my skull the shrillness of poetry
as I hold this diary in my hands.
And on the floor
our orgasmic ashes.
You’re the flaking fresco
of the rites of conscience.
Translated by Patricia Gatt