To search for a souvenir, a sign, something that does not perish.
And had I to offer a gift to her, I would choose this:
I would place her among the dreams of architecture,
There, where St. Ann and the Bernardins,
St. John and the Missionaries meet the sky.
2
In the scent of savory, there where the path
Winds down towards the alders and the rushes
Of a small lake, in the sun, beehives.
The unchanging bees of our forest country
Work, as always, on the day we perish.
She was quick. She shouted: "Now!
No time to lose!" - and they grabbed the children,
They ran that path, from the house, by the alders, into the swamp.
The soldiers came out of the birch grove, were surrounding the house,
They had left their truck in the woods, so as not to scare people away.
"They did not think to let the dog loose,
It would have certainly led them to us."
Thus our country was ending, still generously
Protective with its osiers, mosses, wild rosemaries.
Long trains were moving eastward, towards Asia,
With the laments of those who knew they would not return.
Bees fly, heavy, to their mead breweries,
White clouds drift slowly, reflected in the lake.
Our heritage
will
be handed to unknown people.
Will they respect the hives, nasturtiums by the porch,
Carefully weeded patches, the slanting apple trees?
3
But yes, the restaurant's name was "A Cozy Nook."
How could I have forgotten! Does it mean
I did not want to remember? And the city was falling
Into its sleepy moulting, into a long season
Of people I could not imagine. It hardly, hardly
Returns. Why in my poems is there so little
Autobiography? Where did it come from, the idea
To hide what is my own as if it were sick?
Then, in the "Cozy Nook" I was still one
Of the gentlemen, students and officers, before whom
Little Matthew's waiters would put a carafe
