there is that winter evening
we are walking hand in hand
beneath the crowns
of trees meeting above us
we are all alone
the snow shines
on the alley
dark tree barks
split its expanse

to make it last
we turn around
and walk the same path
in the opposite direction
and do it again

it’s too cold
to stand still
to hold time in its tracks
that way
so we attempt its
demise by trying
to fool it with
the eternal return
of the same

same gaze in the distance
same fear of turning our heads
toward each other
same thought of
that train
that will take you
come morning

Victor Pambuccian is a professor of mathematics at Arizona State University. His poetry translations, from Romanian, French, and German, have appeared in Words Without Borders, Two Lines, International Poetry Review (IPR), Pleiades, and Black Sun Lit. A bilingual anthology of Rumanian avant-garde poetry, with his translations, for which he received a 2017 NEA Translation grant, was published in 2018 as Something is still present and isn’t, of what’s gone. Aracne editrice, Rome. He was the guest editor of the Fall 2011 issue of IPR. Some of his poems were published in Communion and Adelaide Literary Magazine.