Every heart is a minute Poem by Màrius Sampere

Every heart is a minute that lasts
as long as a lifetime; every life,
a heart that beats during one brief minute.
That's how we drink up the years: just one gulp
of milk, the first one. The others were spilt.

The silent football of clouds the wind
carries away to where memory ceases,
the insect that ignores it's lightning, the clock of evil
with hands of judgement, all this and nothing
is worth one blue span of the mercy
that allows for it and wants it.

But, my God, what a price, what a price,
the extremely brief permission to love!

Translated by D. Sam Abrams