Winter in Guernica

The same beats start it off.

On my thirty-seventh birthday,
I could feel the seasons changing.
Houses strained against the brutal thrust
of a wind that stripped the world of green.
I felt the bare wood splinter against my touch
as though only to obliterate you from my mind.
Tarnished gutters choked on the last autumn rain,
until I relinquished my hope with the dying of day.
That night, all color was silently washed away.

When I found you the following week at El Árbol,
you said, “The ideas of the world are changing,”
and yours were changing with them.
We parted dispassionately beneath the oak
as the last of its leaves shivered from their branches.
The leaves never again graced that tree
and neither did we.

Last night a dove flew to my windowsill.
I suspected my sign of resurrection,
but its beak merely stole the life of a moth.
The body descended to rest on the cold barren clay
as wings and ideas slowly blew away.

In this manner, I am extinguished.
As you burn on like a Luftwaffe incendiary
in those crowded streets of fear and anguish.
Through twisted forms and shades of gray,
I might catch a glimpse of you from my window,
y olvidar, no puedo.