The letters friends write you; the egg-white
of the moon, camped so many times behind
the little curtain with angels in the library;
the balusters where pigeons come to mate
in inebriated encounters; the blazing prickly pears
from whence howl the secular and scarlet tones
of sundown light: beauty slips away with you
to the calm places of the being, to the casual
sun that hired mourners have to watch passing
like a red cameo, over your epitaph.

Translated by Julie Wark