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On a Monday

Eliseo Diego

June 10, 2009

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)

Eliseo DiegoEliseo Diego (1920-94) was an important Cuban poet. His books include Libro de Quiza y de Quién Sabe (Book of Perhaps and of Who Knows) (1989).


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