I chance by this poem after waving
goodbye to Apollinaire and Max Ernst, lost
like a scared lamb in the columbarium.

Not a tourist, not a pierce of light.

Where do I see her, through
the fissures of whose tombs, the very old lady
in an arctic blue dress, a hunching body like a willow?

Not a word, not a glance.

Bending at a tilt, she stoops and rinses milk-
yellow daisies, her deft fingers break their stems
and trim the leaves, landing precisely

as if they are plucking on violin strings.
Like a largo aria, she touches those that bear
French flags, cremated between 1944 and 1945:

Unknown, Died for Résistance.

Half-moon petals glide off her palms, cluster
at her feet and dwindle. Death paces at two
steps away, painless, formless and anonymous.

Maybe she is also a résistante .
Maybe she has lost someone in the war.
So many maybe 's or maybe not' s.

In the end, what really matters?

The clock tower does not strike. What I see
forgets about time. The title is her youth,
a resisting heart, pushing life beyond goodbyes.