AFFIRMATION

When will you have to say
                    yes
to feel the passion of those days
(February 1990        absolute reassurance
in the gaze    in the smile    the first
embarrassed gestures)
        possessing you again?

You can still hear her voice.
    No you can still remember her.
       
What is not real
(the reflection of the face on the water
    the hand that suddenly rose
to draw the circle of valediction)
        should look real.

What never was
should be again.

The mind
in a perpetual rotation
invents the words that you will utter
(you will offer)        at the right moment.

Beauty is not the question now.
Maybe it never was.
Nor is the pace (even the rhythm)   
            of today’s confession

(to say I love you is to say I want you to be)

Emotions
(fear        guilt        grief        rage
            are you trapped in the whiteness of the first image?)

are swiftly disguised into lines
    lines extracted from a conceivable body. (Unreal)


So?

Lines:        (We need to move on    I am still on your side)

The gods will not return             (they never left)
        *
Is everything expended?            Let us begin to live
        *       
To be able to write:                I have been happy for an entire day.
        *
He has lost everything.             Even loneliness.

                        And history?

To bow to necessity
            or to the accidental?        (of the plot)

(to the necessity of the accidental?)
and history?

        skillfully cut
at the point where freedom
“is clothed in the cloak of responsibility.”
                    (Responsibility of the one who stirs the ashes
who ceaselessly speaks
who asks for absolution    devotion    love)        (submission?)

Which image of the world
    are you trying to re-construct?

(Which pronouncement (vision) continues to be incomplete?)

Ingenuous metaphors
    harmonious alliterations
        thoughts that attend to the panting of language

So?

    and history?

the woman who hides
her eyes under the veil                (mistress? for how long?)

(is she looking at you?    at others?        at her past?)
       
                    . . . at the moment

when someone takes the chair away         (last chance)
and the music begins again
                    the moment
you reach out
    to hold on to the void
and

AFFIRMATION