Temperate memory

2007

translated by Mina Karavanta

It was not the heliotrope in the vase

but the odourless flower in his memory’s hollow

that emitted this pure aroma.

The flower did not reveal any of the secrets

that the sunflower – in its touchable complacency –

shamelessly admitted,

nor could it anyway by its nature

claim what, however little or much, a presence

might pronounce.

The idea of the flower

was not conductive to a vivid recollection;

on the contrary,

its beauty,

that is, the plenitude of its amorphous being,

in truth had something clear and final.

Something inside him told him

that reality –

this continually updated data bank –

is nothing but a genuine invention,

the need to deny the image

that with such certainly your eyes reflect.

Affirmation, Dedalus Press, Dublin 2007