A simple smell
in a room
stops time,
it places you before me,
you reach out your hand,
you light my cigarette:
"accendino", you say
and the look in my eyes
responds to you
grateful for the new word
more than for having my
thin cigarette lit, new, stranger.
The same smell
sits me on a chair
and gives me the song from your lips
the bright in your black eyes,
the white smile, radiant, young,
the promises of meeting each other
in the abrupt distance that
keeps us apart.

A smell, is in consequence,
not just a smell, nice or ugly,
it is a memory
a love, a word,
a promise, a longing:
it is that which we lack
in a certain instant,
and not being able to open our soul to let it inside,
comes in through our nose like a wish smell,
like a guitar smell, like a looks smell...

A smell is a tiny piece of finished time that the air gives us again.

Note: "accendino" is the Italian word for "lighter"

Este poema es la traducción al inglés del anteriormente publicado con el título "Un Olor"