in me, nothing is extinguished or forgotten’

Pablo Neruda, ‘If you forget me’, 1952

*

the desolate muse
the rubbed heart
all given space
in time

what has lapsed?
endured?
a mirage in the slender grasp of awareness
a totem of history
a faded absolute

tonight
in the moist air
a trembled kiss
a troubled thought dismissed
a fierce dignity
freed from longing

tonight
bats swarm the sky
in dragon formation

their eternity
ungodly
unimagined
is mine also

*