I have arrived late
to the end of the promise
that I made myself
long, long ago,
when chance was violating
the principle that separates
our fingertips
in an apsidal lemniscate
and solitude was a prime number,
odd,
unstoppable odd and Solitary loneliness,
more solitary, perhaps, than that flower
which veiled the unburied corpse of Robert Walser
in the snows of Herisau, and fate
awaited, cold and impatient
in my hallway,
mouldy with the rain
of a thousand nights without their moons.
And I
who loved you the best way
without thinking it better, how will I do
to resurrect the unpronounceable red of your lips
wounded by so many words
that were never said
or heard?
This is how I now contemplate
the Uninhabited light
of those eyes of yours
without eaves or frost or winter ermine,
of those eyes that lost
the thirst of their forest
to become cruel basalt.
Tell me,
why do you insist
to dwell on my silent eyelids
with kindly stars and goldfinches,
if I, in your name, tear and fold
the leaves to the wind opening, on the bias,
the immediate chapter of the voice
in banks of futile birds?
Tell me,
what never happened, will it happen?
Let's play dead
now that no one can see us, that the night is still premature
and sleep is light
and the dead don't know they are dead.
