He reads: What soul suffers in secret, the flesh shows openly.
Deep within, in a region hardly accessible, a bold self-image
sends messages of bloodshed and conquest, which reverberate in
his heart of hearts.
[I forget which hand is writing.]
He does not doubt that he exists.
The five senses have left their mark on him. It is a record of
what has happened to him, but he cannot talk or travel until he
finds a body of water.
A man who has lived on reindeer’s flesh amuses himself with
ripples.
In this cage was once a nightingale. In the echo, new words
for wind.
The usual convulsions, and a green cat. And, after all, months
or years are nothing to him.
[My image contains his body.]
His body contains bodies.
Blemishes.
Inglories.
Vague figures, in a howling wind, and with no notion of
perspective.
Of countless ruined worlds, he would appropriate the
essential emblem. Wall struggling with wall, shadow with shad-
ow.
Thousands of miles a day.
He gazes across an unguarded cemetery—gazes idly, waiting
for new equipment.
As through a fixed window, he finds a kind of space, the
visible world foreshortened.
He does not see deeply, but—still—one thing behind another.
He keeps a tiny bird, folded like a sheet of paper.
Twice two is four—still—and a circle has no angles.
Body sheds shoulder, jaw. However body may appear, the soul
comes back in scars.
[There are no dead. Only names.]
Too close, ruin wrinkles the surface—his breath bothers
reality. The sun pours down. The pots are mended.
An unfolding, from where it is all contained.
The ships have been salvaged. [I do not know what body he
has in mind.] Clothing is resumed. Temples are rebuilt.
“Which body?” we inquire, while all the liars cry out,
“Verily!”
As though all this were in the dark.
Here is a column of soldiers, a heap of apples, an avenue of
trees. Here a swarm of bees, of birds, a row of equidistant lines.
A set of unequal objects distributes the field of vision.
Here is the painted world in an actual image. [I have no
theory for the clouds he sees.]
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