[Can They?]

Can they?-

yes, they can

be, there are

times of great happiness-

astonished

she's busy bringing them back . . .

or imagining them? she doesn't know,

doesn't know the difference-

she, memory-memory of what?

of only other memory?

("HURRY AND BECOME THE PAST . . ."]

"Hurry and become the past, become it at once

and irreversibly" -whose voice

is this? whose torment?

Where did it end?

Did it really exist, the human kind,

nose to the grindstone inside the burning wall?

or is it too the past, the past and nothing else?

the past of what time

was never present-or so it seems...

O waste, waste of blood.

Translated by Stephen Sartarelli