LOUIS-RENÉ DES FORÊTSPretending to ignore the laws of nature,
Resurrecting in dream the obliterated form,
Giving to illusion the virtues of a miracle,
Does any of this make death less triumphant?
At the very most, let us doubt that death can separate,
Or that the fact of being nowhere is a fact.
Irreparable break: let us take full measure of it.
Here we will be in sorrow our whole life through,
Our memories open like a wound,
It is here that we will find her once more
But a prisoner of her image, a recluse
In that all-consuming darkness
In which, to bind her misfortune to our own,
We dreamed of losing ourselves together,
The cables cut, and full of joy perhaps,
Had the step been less hard to take:
One with her in death,
Chosen as the perfect form of silence.
Coupling with nothing, nothing engenders nothing.
If we must live awake to living things,
Let us rather fear that our sorrow subside
As memories weaken and grow dull.
To su√er no more, seeing her no more
On those nights that welcomed her returning
Would be to let the heart grow poor,
Twice devastated, and alone.
—john naughton