Rafael Alberti - The Dead Angels

Search, search for them:
In the insomnia of forgotten conduits
In gutters blocked by the muteness of litter.
Not far from the pools incapable of retaining a cloud,
A lost eye
A broken ring
Or a trampled star.
For I've seen them:
In the rubble momentarily appearing in the mist.
For I've touched them:
In the exile of a defunct brick,
Come to naught from a tower or a cart,
No longer beyond the crumbling chimneys,
Nor the tenacious leaves that stick to shoes.
In all of that.
More in those stray splinters consumed without flame.
In those sunken absences broken furniture endures.
Not far from the names and signs that grow cold on the walls.
Search, search for them:
Beneath the drop of wax that buries the word in the book,
Or the signature on the corner of a letter,
That brings the dust rolling in.
Near the forgotten fragment of a bottle,
The sole of a shoe lost in the snow,
The razor-blade abandoned at the edge of a precipice.

Rafael Alberti

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