Sadly,
or perhaps not,
I recognize that I have an arid heart.
And as if a light had turned on,
the intelligence that creates and informs the world
becomes as clear to me as the existence of organisms
as clear as the existence of logical and invariable physical laws.
The will to live recovers and carries on.
The seats in the tram,
made of tough,
close-woven straw,
take me to distant places and proliferate in the form of industries,
workers,
their houses,
lives,
realities,
everything.
I occasionally lift my eyes from the book where I’m truly feeling and glance,
as a foreigner,
at the scenery slipping by—fields,
cities,
men and women,
fond attachments,
yearnings—and all this is no more to me than an incident in my repose,
an idle distraction to rest my eyes
from the pages I’ve been reading so intently.
Friends: not one.