Echo of Another Sonata - Enrique Lihn

                In your opinion one love erases another

and so it is, dear, yet in love not everything

belongs to the dart and quiver—

false starts—or is part of the wound that bewilders

all pleasure, all grief

twin of death, metaphor for birth

                The victims of Eros survive the crime

that, joyfully, they’re passive agents of

its authors in a mysterious moment and they don’t forget

at least I don’t: my memory of you

remains, independent of love

as in that painting by Magritte where the dawn sky

still hasn’t dissolved night in the street

nor its precious moon: a light curdled

in the streetlight that darkly illuminates that road

                It’s true, the oxymoron

is no more than a figure of speech

and can be guilty of premeditation

Not so myself, at least I hope not, if I tell you:

one love doesn’t erase another

Memory, also, in its way loves

and, as someone said, “There is no forgetting.”

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Enrique Lihn (1929–1988) Chile

Translated by Mary Crow

Source: World Literature Today