Poem

by Volha Hapeyeva

Poem
     translated from Belarusian by Annie Rutherford

the present tense is giving me difficulties
I am better at the past
and so I live there
if only it were like in those movies
me losing my memory
and the people who’ve moved into it
without my permission
I would calmly remove each recollection of them
like a hair off a coat shoulder
already unable to recall
whose it was