THE PHOTOGRAPHS

What remains, scraps of time,

some scraps of mine.

There is silence in the hot afternoon,

a still bubble of heat outside,

the motionless pines, inert branches

except for some random sirocco gust,

the dry grass singing, cicadas searing the grass

and sandbar fever on the skin,

by the slow, perennial, marshy green.

Scraps of time.

I rummage the cupboard and find them

in boxes, albums, envelopes,

inside magazines, even in an old wallet,

the leather worn out to a shine,

with the consistence of linen, almost a gauze,

scraps of time that consume and leave you

staring at slivers of light, staring for the soul

or the breath of all burnt gold, the ore-

I start looking at them, time’s scraps,

these pictures of bygone, bypassed existence

of various shapes and consistence,

these faces recurring, a century ago,

the black and white that looks

both essential and elemental

and rich, expectant in a way,

young cheekbones, at their prime,

enthusiast of being there

in their own living rhyme,

with in front what we believe they believed,

a neat plain, a spread of time,

with these wide, thorough smiles

in the present cicadas’ light now,

light of silence in which I keep looking

and find a few, more recent, colour,

here, me and her, I had forgotten these,

probably never seen them before,

and I forget the others at once, I stare

at the simple drama of what

was there and is no more,

I look in her smile for what

I want to last anyway,

I look and look

and sink in the armchair

and sink in the sky.