be on the qui vive when love
  is flyblown-piquant in the air
  that we breathe,
         shall we do splendidly here
where we once cried for benediction
in this station where love broke our
bones and laughed us away?

there is no retrieval of the memory
in the siege of nostalgia
when the past comes back with
the fracas of one hundred men marching
underneath the flagella
          of stark moments—

the streets will soon be named
after deaths, yet not one bears
   a trace of you.