It’s four in the morning, an austral November --
it’s not, four in the morning, though it is the end of May.
It has been getting much colder since your last letter,
your absence feels more tangible every day.
I first noticed your absence at the registry, in Tribunales
where I was searching for traces from an Austrian writer.
His marriage deed, signed by some makeshift witness,
was hiding with millions of strangers, and I was struck
by the thought that among those names hid also yours.
There was music on Uruguay Street as I walked to the station,
for love of the avenue and autumn sunshine, I went to Callao.
At the corner of Paraná I looked up in idle contemplation,
hearing your remarks about the here and the now,
and when I saw the shutters still closed on the seventh floor,
your absence became presence, once more.
When you left, I did not know what you only wrote me later.
Someone had been waiting for you in a faraway home,
if transient, for you were not sure where you belonged,
in a house in the desert, the mountains, or by the sea.
How it tortured you that moving on
always felt like moving in circles, or back and forth.
Last Sunday in Palermo, strolling through amber parks,
your friend and I evoked the last night we saw you,
how lonesome you looked, how somber, ready to embark,
when you adjusted your hat in front of the Diamond’s mirror,
while the piano was playing and the light here grew dimmer,
while the sun swiftly rose over the Balearic coast.