Search, search for them: <br />In the insomnia of forgotten conduits <br />In gutters blocked by the muteness of litter. <br />Not far from the pools incapable of retaining a cloud, <br />A lost eye <br />A broken ring <br />Or a trampled star. <br /> For I've seen them: <br />In the rubble momentarily appearing in the mist. <br />For I've touched them: <br />In the exile of a defunct brick, <br />Come to naught from a tower or a cart, <br />No longer beyond the crumbling chimneys, <br />Nor the tenacious leaves that stick to shoes. <br /> In all of that. <br />More in those stray splinters consumed without flame. <br />In those sunken absences broken furniture endures. <br />Not far from the names and signs that grow cold on the walls. <br /> Search, search for them: <br />Beneath the drop of wax that buries the word in the book, <br />Or the signature on the corner of a letter, <br />That brings the dust rolling in. <br />Near the forgotten fragment of a bottle, <br />The sole of a shoe lost in the snow, <br />The razor-blade abandoned at the edge of a precipice.<br /><br />Rafael Alberti<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-dead-angels/
