The Fly, By Liviu Campanu Poem by Patrick McGuinness

Another of your letters, Cilea, and the paper goes
for weeks in my pocket, folded, unfolded, becomes soft as cotton
as the words fade and have to be guessed at;
or, better still, replaced with words I wish you'd written,
wish you'd write. As for the envelope, I've licked the flakes
of gum along the seal, and fancied I tasted you: the candy
of your lipstick and a haunting of Duty-Free smoke.
You tasted of airports, Diplomatic Clubs, Politburo shopping malls,

while I'm the bluebottle on his flypaper turnstile, pumping
the sugar from the poison, twisting in the dead breeze,
riveted by glucose hits . . . I'm sinking deeper and deeper
into the white shallows of the page, what I remember of your eyes.