Today I learnt that Coda, that evocative word I often used around you

Really means tail. So then let this tail be Vaporous like the slip-

Stream of a jet that Carried me away From you to forever.

I can still read you, However, in the objects We let stand for signifiers

In this city which I still Inhabit. Here we began The poem for which this

One will be another coda. Take this statue, Valentine. It was one of the first lines

We came to simultaneously, Sweet even after these years. Boredom, gall & the betrayal

Came later along with Everything else. Ending was Easy, for by then I had learned

How to amputate, how to turn Off a faulty lamp in my eye. Forgetting then is what remains. So towards that this coda.

I love those train timetables at little railway stations, Standing on the wet platform and contemplating the infinity of the tracks. The distant howl of a locomotive. What, what? (No one understands the nebulous language of steam engines)

Passenger trains. Tank cars. Freight cars full of ore Endlessly pass by. Thus pass the days of your life through the station of your being, Filled with voices, noise, signals And the heavy ore of memory.

Translated from Albanian by Robert Elsie.