June 14th 1986

In Geneva
where you knew happiness
you have died, this time for ever.

You learnt
that nothing remains and that in time
the other man, who wrote pages we know by heart
will also be food for oblivion.

There was no God in you
but you were a country for many
and gladdened the hours
of men and women inhabiting
a perverse century.

In Geneva or Cambridge you converse
with a young man
beside another lake, during the war
that tore hope from your heart.

You, who built an edifice of words
and gave it to the echo of the libraries.

Traslated from Spanish by Rowena Hill