BECHEROVKA Poem by Manuel de Freitas

Norwegian, tall, dubiously
dark-haired and forever smiling.
She begged me not to be
sad, as truly I was.
And I think she paid for my last drink
before asking me "what I do".

Writing, about death, isn't
exactly a profession.
But that's what I answered,
while on some napkin or other
I summed up, just for her, my "work".

I'll never know if she made out what I scrawled,
if she bought my books, if she heard
what in my dreadful French I tried
to tell her that night, hopelessly lost.

Nearly every poem is this: an inexcusable
way of saying we didn't touch
the body that for once in our life was so close
and that didn't even leave us a fleeting name.