"On the Day of the Departure by Bus."
At this point, if you know very well
the works of Raphael Alberti, you
might recognize a source in which it's modeled.
It's an early poem of his called--
well, in translation, it would be
called on the day of his death by an armed hand.
This is called on the day of the departure by bus.
That's kind of the relationship it has with its source.
A remote relationship.
Tell me if you were not happy in those days.
You were not yet 25, and you had not yet abandoned the guitar.
I swear to you by your nakedness that you were a guitar.
You swore to me by your nakedness
that you were a guitar.
The moon swear to us both by your nakedness
that you had abandoned yourself completely
who would not go on living.
The typewriter will be glad to have become
the poem, the guitar to have been your body,
I too have had the luck to envy the sole of your shoe
in the dead of winter.
A passenger has lost his claim check.
A brunette her barrette.
And I, I think that there are moths eating holes
in my pockets, that my place in line
is evaporating, that the moon is not the moon
and the bus is not the bus.
What is the word for goodbye.