Condemnation to Oblivion and Ruin

 

Hung from iron and rain,

like a ceremonial corpse,

the old street clock

watches over a spectral city.

It no longer measures human hours.

How many cracks?

How much dust and ash?

It recounts the decay

of everything that was once

captured on film.

Below it, the bookstore slept.

Coffee simmered slowly

while lovers pretended

that eternity could fit

between films, pages,

and dusk-time cigarettes.

But light resists,

light resists immortality,

when it is lived,

when it is loved.

Sometimes you return.

Not out of nostalgia:

nostalgia is another way

of obeying the corpse.

You return because something of yours

remained trapped there,

turning in circles

like the motionless hands

of that condemned contraption.

The city continues below:

prostitutes, beggars,

and dogs beneath the fog,

shadows crossing the cold

without yet knowing

what time exacts.

But above,

over all of us,

it remains.

Gnawed away.

Blind.

Suspended.

No one remembers the names

of those who kissed there;

no one remembers the voices,

the betrayals,

the promises

once thought invincible.

Sometimes you think you hear something:

a brief laugh,

the brush of a page,

but no...

It is ruin

repeating itself.

And those who return

do not come back to find something,

but to verify

that the wound

remains open.