GOODBY MY TWENTIETH CENTURY (II) Poem by Aldo Nove

Seasons,
on the magnetic tape we used to record them,
to mix the decades with our names,
with those of cities and ages,
to play the tape backwards
and wear out the tape
to blur its mechanical sliding
with the one of our dreams
and the fulfillments of time,
this way, they weren't quite the days
that formed the years, but scraps of hours
interwoven with millennia,
with toys, with bodies,
they arrived, ethereal,
and clothed in solid
plastic, we inserted the pencil in history
to block its gears,
we illuminated them,
the light was coming from a box,
the box was coloured,
we used to live in there,
the walls melted like a cloth,
we bought chocolates,
the man was on the moon.