Solitude requires concentration. It all starts the day before, in the evening,
with the effort of setting the alarm clock, until “effort” and “time” stop
being synonyms. The vocabulary soon expands to include a new definition
of “necessity.” And there are many other words that cannot be ignored.
All this to find a better term for a calendar in which the day after yesterday
is not always the day before tomorrow.
Tag: poem
Necessities
“Your dinner is in the microwave.” He stared at an old plastic container
with a misshapen lid, filled with a random mix of vegetables, some fresh
and some canned, and water with a dash of olive oil. Dinner has always
been a challenge. Not that he worried too much about it. After all, it was
just body fuel, a tad of an annoying necessity in the nature of things, like
the yolk-coloured cover of a book in his hand.
Nothing but silence
His greatest ambition had always been to be uneven,
somewhat passé in every step he took,
as he denied himself too much sense
and, at the same time, did his utmost to hang
onto that squeamish consolation of tomorrow,
which he was so afraid of that he kept scratching
for crumbs of comfort in the casual strokes
of the poet’s typewriter. But as he swallowed
a few gutted memoirs that he found in the escritoire,
he realised that there might be nothing there for him
but the silence of the graveyard of dead gods.
The misery of the poet’s life
The poet was cursing the misery of his life. The small hermitage
in the centre of a large city that he now shared with Mr. Nothing
and Platocrates witnessed many of his misfortunes. Once conceived
by chance, he was always a child of unrequited love, but did not seem
to notice that maybe it had something to do with the unwise choice
of objects of his affection. At least that was what Mr. Nothing thought.
Perhaps his brethren could understand that, in fact, the poet was fond of
the misery of his life.
To invent the fly
As he wandered through the shouting streets of Friday night,
Mr. Nothing wondered if it was worth trading his tinnitus
for the promise of fun at McNasty’s, as the name itself was
not particularly appealing, and the noise on the spot made it
hard to hear his own thoughts, let alone have any conversation.
And then there was the curse of many such establishments: karaoke.
So, after an hour or so, excusing himself with a headache, he left.
At home, he made flatbread and tried to imagine a Man of a sort
willing to invent the fly.
On the eve of returning to the office
Upset Mr. Nothing tried to remember the last time he had tied
the Windsor knot. The blue shirts hung neatly in the wardrobe,
waiting for the moment he would return to his previous routine.
He used to laugh at himself a lot, joking that old people always
tie the Windsor knot. Now he was just shaking his head irritably
at unconvincing glances of all those struggling to persuade him
that a regular nine-to-five was not just a sentiment of the past.
In the end, even an oldish office Casanova would eventually forget
the taste of a cup of mean coffee and the occasional five to seven.
Xin nian kuai le / San nin fai lok
There were words that had been uttered
with great emphasis in the rush of youth
that had misunderstood a disillusioned old man,
and then there were words no one dared to say
any more. And now all that is left is to wear
something red and drown out the reality
for a moment with a handful of firecrackers
between the new skyscrapers, pretending
not to notice the monuments disappearing
from the campuses.
The usual glass of cognac
Hearing the moped passing down the street,
Mr. Nothing thought about that morning
when, instead of the usual glass of cognac,
he had ordered a glass of water, and as he waited
for the train, he had listened to the stratagems
coming from the table right behind. Unfortunately,
he had nothing to be fond of, and even the sound
of the accordion played skilfully in the underpass
did not make him shudder, as it usually did.
At home, he spent his time opening and closing
the curtains and taking care to replace an empty
tissue box with a new one. At work, he paid attention
to the use of words like “certainly” and “of course.”
And he was actually at peace with such a life,
somehow avoiding many of its predicaments.
Only, he could no longer stand that glass of cognac,
served with the rest of the day.
Two years ahead
“In a week, you will be forty-seven.” As he listened
to the first gusts of Storm Malik, the poet wondered where
their names might have come from, but at these words,
he looked at the three volumes with wrinkled pages
barely salvaged from the flood that stood on the shelf
by the window. The Diary by their favourite expat,
with an essay Against the Poets. And when he pondered
the right answer, Mr. Nothing said, “But don’t worry,
you still have two years ahead of you.”
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