dir

 

Women in long dresses
tightly laced
men with
tall hats
monocle and
choking collars
standing in front
of coaches fountains
garden bowers
velvet curtains
imitation garlands
captured in sepia
for ever
so strange to the child
the little hands leaf
through the pages
the mother points here and there
that was my aunt
her sons only
one daughter
look grandpa and grandma
and that girl there looks like
you
they all live nowhere
but in this book
it fills up gradually
the child has long been
a child no more
but remains a child
for one person
until the final
day
now she is in the family album
the child also grown
old
inserts the last photo

Translated by Geoffrey C. Howes