Furthermore,
he added,
this art wasn’t exactly a novelty for him,
and he shyly observed that,
having nowhere to go and nothing to do,
nor friends to visit,
nor any interest in reading books,
he usually spent his nights at home,
in his rented room,
likewise writing.
And its very colour,
the fading of that colour,
its spots and cracks—all came from outside it,
and this.
And during all of this I walk down the street,
a wandering sleepyhead,
a stray leaf.
I turn my back to the grey window with its panes that are cold to the touch,
and by some magic of the penumbra I suddenly see the interior of our old house,
next to which there was a courtyard with a squawking
parrot; and my eyes fall asleep from the irrevocable fact of having
in effect,
lived.
And in the composition of space itself,
a different interrelationship of something like planes
had changed and fragmented the way that sounds
lights and colours use space.
We feel a latent irritation that even
seems to imbue the inorganic air around us.
For me,
since I’ve stopped hoping or not hoping,
life is simply an external picture that includes me and that I look at,
like a show without a plot,
made only to please the eyes—an incoherent dance,
a rustling of leaves in the wind,
clouds in which the sunlight changes colour,
ancient streets that wind every which way around the city.
The city’s features were reborn once the blurry mask slipped away.
He should be careful to position his soul in such
a way that passing things and events can’t disturb him.
Everything is complex,
or I’m the one who’s complex.
But since I am me,
I merely take a little pleasure in the little
that it is to imagine myself as that someone else.
Beset by lucid and free associations of ideas,
images and words,
I say what I imagine I’m feeling as much as what I’m really feeling,
and I’m unable to distinguish between the suggestions of my soul and
the fruits born of images that fell from my soul to the ground
nor do I know whether the sound of a discordant word or the
rhythm of an incidental phrase might not be diverting me from the already hazy point
from the already stowed sensation,
thereby absolving me from thinking and saying,
like long voyages designed to distract us.