a toast,
a toast to every moment of clarity forgotten,
to every splendid line i put off writing down
until i could conjure it no longer,
to every sentence i should have spoken
and every silence i should have kept,
a toast to every deception i miscalculated,
to every promise broken, every bond neglected,
to every question i failed in formulating,
to every time when i should have wept
and every time when i should have refrained from weeping;
a toast, a toast to every embarrassment, every disgrace,
every regret,
to every time my hand should have been extended
and to every hand i stubbornly refused to accept,
and the rest, too, a toast to all the rest.

what else is there to do on nights like these
if not to get drunk
on memories,
the stronger the better? every spectacle
of microcosmic tragicomedy,
that makes up the vortex of my life,
is sublime before these disordered senses,
before it's revealed to be
pathetic and melancholy in the morning's lucid, lurid light.
a toast, then, that the night last the longest
and the next day pass by quickly enough.
a toast to every moment of clarity forgotten,
to every splendid line i put off writing down
until i could conjure it no longer,
to every sentence i should have spoken
and every silence i should have kept.