The Night of Ashes

Don’t know if you understand it in the same way

now that all doors of possibility have slammed shut.

Dreamt of you yesterday, with the wind in your hair,

forcing you out,

hoisting you up from the bridge,

affixing you to the sky,

arid and distant.

I was raving about you today:

don’t know if you want to look back

and see two strange souls

with their cut-out silhouettes

on the promenade, in the thick fog.

I try to forget your breath,

forget the resigned paleness of your face

before the last farewell,

before I lose the key

to the casket of the myths

we wove

on the night of ashes.

Translated by Patricia Gatt