Fine collections of dust
form an archaeological site,
a bereavement, of words left buried,
where we usually call rainy days days of solace.
Dust accumulates with neglect.
We dig deep Pinter, papers of his verses a home
to endless questions. When I ask, sometimes,
out of the sheer distance that separates us,
about ends, your reply, about impermanence,
does not fail to travel miles for days,
reaching me through whispers
of the cold summer, telling me death
is a practice of forgetting love.
Where is love when it is written only
on yellowed paper. What is love
when it is lost among pages of unreasonable
thoughts. Spines of books shiver when touched.
Shelves of languages produce soft bones,
preys to the hungry. But I can only imagine
about voids, now that I am far, and nothing more.
You think impermanence is constant,
and indeed it is. What misses constancy
is a blank page, waiting for ink, formed from dust,
the end of death. If it becomes so that we move
out of sheer love, it is bad luck
that I see you in the dark and still I keep moving.
Darkness is a vision of neglect, a letter
without response, left to crumple.
Death is a decay of all that lives outside you.
Poetry, language, love. Death is a buoyant mirror,
without darkness I see through you.
Ian Salvaña writes from Cateel.