Across, 1984
Christmas used to be islands of softly scented cellophane sheets, of rustling nights 
In the kitchen's bright light, a beauty reigned supreme 
She was my mother 
* 
The century discreetly reached its zenith, the horizon shunned the sweet husk of the sky filled with emptiness 
Now and then Miles's meteor silently between the fingers 
* 
All through lunch amidst the conversation  
The world, briefly abandoned, poked its nose out 
From the sympathetic white silences behind her blouse 
* 
(... even that precious time, trembling with memory,  
was yet as incomplete as another; the fingers clutched the emptiness, a little mist, steps and gestures stuck deep in the crevice  
between the restaurant table, the pale desert, and the appearance 
of the unobtrusive tram out there, 
at the edge of the park, bleeding slowly in the silence. 

What remains, now forever,  
is the insistent glow of what might have been -) 
* 
Petr Král, Collected Poems 2, 1969–1987