I watch him take his laboured breaths with
the kinship of knowing I’ll be no different.
A novel is a story of what never was,
and a play is a novel without narration.
I sleep when I dream of what doesn’t
exist; dreaming of what might exist wakes me up.
But this will only trouble those who feel attracted to futility.
I recall the joy of having no rights or responsibilities,
of being free because I still didn’t
know how to think or feel—and this recollection
if it’s well written and visually effective,
will arouse in my reader exactly the same emotion I was feeling,
which had nothing to do with childhood.
The absurd lie has all the charm of the perverse with the even greater,
ultimate charm of being innocent.
—Did you ever read a grammar? Never.
What is all this really? What is all this? It’s that I,
alone in the deserted office,
can imaginatively live without abstaining from my intelligence.
We could hear the voices of the wagoners,
and they were really people.
Effort is useless but entertains.
Always the vague sound of parties in the distance,
always a procession that was supposed to pass beneath my windows,
but no golden red fish in my pools,
and no apples in the green stillness of my
orchard; and not even the smoke from beyond the trees
rising from the chimneys of poor huts with happy people,
ever lulled to sleep with their ballads
of simplicity the restless mystery of my self-awareness.