To remember is not always to go back to what was,
for memory holds seaweed dragging up
wonders,
alien objects that never floated.
A light racing through chasms
lights up earlier years I’ve never lived,
which I recall like yesterday.
About 1900
I was strolling in a Paris park . . . it was
enveloped in fog.
My dress was the same color as the mist.
The light was the same as now
after seventy years.
Now the brief storm is over
and through the pane I see people walk by
near this window so near the clouds.
A time that is not mine
seems to rain inside my eyes.

translated by Willis Barnstone