IN A STATION OF THE METRO Poem by Manuel António Pina

My childhood passed and I was not there.
Thinking of something else, gazing in another direction.
The best years of my life lost to distraction.

Where is she now, Rosalinda, of the rosy thighs?
Belinda, Brunhilda, Kriemhilda, who could they be?
Teachers of German, most probably,
in some far-off middle school that lies

beyond our time and space. Long ago, today,
he would have loved them with a shameless fire,
as in a dirty dream of wild love and teen desire
from which someone awoke the other day.

For all was memory, stray traces
of what happened years ago, and he,
remembering, was also just a memory,
a face now fading among other faces.

Seen from here, from recollection now,
my life's a multitude, a murky chain
where I, (who could he be?), seek in vain
my face, a petal on a wet, black bough.