***
I cannot tell
The taste of childhood summers.
Caressing the ripe fruit
Straight on the tree,
The intense sweetness
Left on the tongue
To be saved up for Novembers,
To be sipped sparingly from memory.
Between scent and recall –
It is a cadence to stop.
The boulevard with multi-story houses
Where I lived once
Rises up in my eyes,
And with the boulevard comes the frozen lake,
For ice skaters.
The snow scores in flames of lanterns,
The weeping willows,
Tarkovsky with his interpretation
Of Bruegel’s ‘The Hunters in the Snow’ –
They all begin to take form.
Will it reach the clear surface of my consciousness,
This reminiscence,
This old, unmoving moment
Which is triggered by kiwis in Italia,
Which has traveled so far
To cuddle my present,
To raise up out of the depths of my spirit
Something tender –
I cannot tell.
