On a Monday eternity finally begins
and the day that follows is scarcely named,
and the other is the dark, the done.
On that day are extinguished all whispers
and the face we loved dissolves in mist–
hope becomes hopeless: no one is coming.
Eternity knows nothing of our habits,
indifferent to red and the softest blue, it prefers
gray, smoke, ashes. You scratch
a name and a date on a piece of marble
and it rubs them out
with a careless shoulder, not even
a pinch of bitterness left behind. Yet see,
I cling to Mondays
and I give the next your name;
in total darkness I write
with the tip of my cigarette:
here have I lived.
(Translated from the Spanish by Mark Weiss)
