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About This Poem
It May Arrive Late
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It may arrive late
hidden behind a melancholic sunset,
or inside one of those melodies, one of those scents,
that rescue the pebbles bouncing off the water,
at the beginning of those fifty moves that expect a draw,
as if the supposed king could turn the hour glass over,
or among the sparkling dust that flees from things,
we may no longer be accumulating.
It's a single moment, in a sudden, intense disclosure,
free from fear, full of answers, and eager to step in.
It's a sunbeam bursting through clouds of complacence,
of an existing situation or a redundant condition.
It may arrive late
to get rid of our weighty dreams, our dense illusions,
picking the petals off our to be's, to have's, to do's ...
and almost, at times, to wake us or wake us not.
And when it arrives, when we acknowledge and accept it,
without being able to get away from it, we could understand.
We could understand that there may be one from all
the colors that we certainly won't see again, if we ever saw them all.
Or roads to walk, books to read, songs to hum, peaches to eat ...
And we may finally see the protagonist and recognize the sketch
of our only one-time story, the real one. And you could say two;
and you could refuse the intrussion; and you could lie to yourself.
Like a broken porcelain doll in front of a cracked mirror
waking the echoes of our immune arrogance, our ephemeral victories.
And eventually, the rushing spindle of the days could lose our interest,
and the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle could not fit together.
It may arrive late, with the lights off,
fragile as an afterthought or bold to face it all.
It can last as long as a thought lasts, or persist infinitely,
as a first kiss, as the laugh of children, as a farewell ...
Just in case: The fifty-moves rule in chess intend to prevent players from wasting time by playing random moves that lead nowhere. Under this rule, if no pawns are moved and no captures are made in fifty consecutive moves, the game is declared a draw.
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