Snowy Cemetery Poem by Francesc Parcerisas

Thick flakes of snow fall, hushing everything,
hushing the girl who's left the cemetery,
hushing the earth that fails to realize
it's the earth of a graveyard,
hushing the candles' tiny, lambent animas,
shielded with aluminum foil.
The icy wind is inescapable as it reaches
chafed fingers, matron's prayers,
the gravediggers' glinting shovels
tamping the end with hoary scarves.
Here memory suggests
a fear-tinged, cloudy warmth,
like the heat of a cadaver you're not sure
you ever succeeded in loving.
The snow is everywhere at once,
even within you: a deep down white.
Like a love that's still not dead,
because it's remained glued,
steadfast under the rim
of the brute, mud-caked
rock of life.

Translated by Cyrus Cassells