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New Series No. 18 - 2001
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| Jacques Reda |
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| from Recitatif |
| | Hotel Continental |
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Solitude is chill and soft on the tongue that names it
And lifts the soul a little in broken light;
That’s when – out of the desertion, the severing – a figure
Rises and beckons in its turn under wallpaper leaves,
In the wardrobe’s creak and the margins of a book
That can’t be read by the distant gaze turned on us.
But there’s no pronounceable name for this pit that divides
The self in two, and makes of every heartbeat
A marked door slamming when eviction’s done.
Here I am with one more stair to go,
Where a chair’s consoling presence waits
And reassurance murmurs from the basin;
Where even solitude withdraws its hand from mine
And leaves me, like that day after you’d gone,
When standing in the rain I saw a circle of time
Impossible to reckon, and inside it
The little park gate clashing iron on iron. |
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Translated by Jennie Feldman
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page(s) 152
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