We’ve changed? Hardly, not
significantly. The world has changed.

I’ve stayed the same: I live
in constant change
and I know all about you,
all that can be known,
all but your address, the city you live in,
your children, the language you fill out forms in,
where you go in the morning and who
you come back to in the evening,
that I don’t know but I can guess
(I can see it all
with frightening clairvoyance).

You
live unchanged,
a witness to changes.
And you know almost all about me,
all that you need to know.

We have not changed.

And what about those of us who didn’t make it?

But how can we talk at all
about what they’ve changed into?
It is the world that changed
by their not being around,
we have stayed the same.

Far from each other,
obsessed with the same world.

Small as we are,
insignificant.

Translated by Wayles Browne – © 2008 Wayles Browne

The preceding text is copyright of the author and/or translator and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.