you are not
the memory of you
I carry within
you left her
discreetly behind
like a forgotten sweater
on a chair
after a visit
for my impending days
in a quiet room
for you knew back then
how clouds can gather
how lost we can get
how the absence of light
can lead to the kind of rust
that makes it hard
to see hues of blue
how you’ll be afraid
that I might still be identical
to my own memory
the one you couldn’t
avoid having buried inside
so you might anew
upon touching it
become the living
memory of you
the one you could
no longer recover
for you could
no longer remember
the chair
or the grace
Victor Pambuccian π
the knot of our memories
Author Reading
About the Author
Victor Pambuccian is a professor of mathematics at Arizona State University. His poetry translations from Romanian, French, and German have appeared in Words Without Borders, Two Lines, International Poetry Review, Pleiades, and Black Sun Lit. A bilingual anthology of Romanian avant-garde poetry, with his translations, for which he received a 2017 NEA Translation grant, was published in 2018 as Something is still present and isn’t, of what’s gone. He was the guest editor of the Fall 2011 issue of International Poetry Review. His poems have appeared in Communion, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Panoplyzine, Lucky Jefferson, O:JA&L, Poetica Review, Detour Ahead, The Elevation Review, and Pure Slush.