Paris......
I have no pictures of you now
I didn't keep the few you left me:
notes...a handful of scraps...
fraying to powder at the edges
fading
on the age-stained folds.
But you are always before me
like that apt word on the tip of the tongue
that doesn't come
--a certain expression on faces
that turn the inquisitive head
....where did I see that before?
on whom?
Your voice with one woman,
your walk with another
...the flurry of an entrance
...the hat askew
your neck before me, your back,
you hands raising a cup.
You are vanishing
bit by bit
like broken glass smoothed
in the roll of the sea.
And I thought...isn't it the same
with the relics of the saints,
a tooth here,
this one's clothes, that one's handkerchief, yet another's pen.
And then I realised that I'm a relic of you,
my hair you ran your fingers through
my lips where you laid your mouth.
You didn't fall with the white flakes of your letters
I tore up on the Pont Neuf.
The river didn't swallow you along with them.
You last while I do.
~ by Padraig O Snodaigh
From the Irish, trans. by Gabriel Fitzmaurice
What a beautiful poem ... talking about the love that is never lost, despite its physical realities, because "you last while I do". It does express a different sentiments to "if you forget me" ... but both poems are equally loving in its own way ...
