(from ‘After A Bad Shock A Nice Long Rest Would Be Good’)
The 12th Day
Outside is where nature is.
Outside is where one takes a walk.
The hallways are kept inside and different smells come together there.
They scatter and come back again.
On can’t touch them, can’t look at them.
First, the big windows.
And through them, huge and green and full,
flowers on display, standing up on columns of wood.
Sun makes the air white, makes it stay still as if in a cage.
One can’t help looking.
Very clear and pure and in the same way, unsure.
(What is it?)
The place is made up.
One tries to be happy there.
To see, to be in it, one would have to ride a train.
One was wrong.
It was only trees.
(Why ‘only’?)
Next to a pond.
People use it to look at themselves or to throw things into.
Once, a man threw something mechanical into the pond …
a kitchen appliance with wires and dials and shiny bits.
Lots of little buildings, scattered about.
Some have telephones and when one talks into them
a friendly voice tells one where to go.
One talks all the time.
Almost everybody has a lot of nothing to say.
One thinks hard before speaking and uses only the easiest words.
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The 74th Day
Carnivals and fireworks.
An odd mix of people.
One eats all the time and from the first minute.
Soup, meat, dessert, ice.
The wine tastes good.
Some people look but don’t eat anything at all.
There are quiet rooms if one gets sleepy.
One sees trees from one end to the other,
one can’t get away from so many trees.
To see it, to be in it, one would have to ride a train.
Then ride in a car.
The windows are for looking out of
and since someone else is driving that’s okay.
Details are little things and one thinks of them
and tries to give them names
because they may turn out to be important.
The train is not a fact but the train ride is
and it makes one excited and somewhat doubtful.
One begins to think that nothing is impossible
if one is happy this much, for this long.
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The 114th Day
One makes elaborate plans: masked balls,
aquariums, a wall dividing here from there.
It’s true.
The music is easy to listen to.
One listens to it sitting down or else one gets dizzy.
One knows the way, yes, one does, one knows it.
There are different rooms.
Not so friendly and called ‘offices’.
Armchairs pushed right up against the wall.
One sits beneath photographs.
The telephone is a hassle.
The operator is always away.
One knows where away is.
It’s over there in the little shrinking house.
Animals: one tries to make them mind.
Are they paying attention?
A man gallops by on a horse,
a very handsome man with an earring,
bouncing a little kid on his knees.
When it’s hot hammocks appear between the trees.
There are often cats in the branches.
One doesn’t try to make them mind.