The Ghost of a Hunter

T
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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