Tag: poem

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.

“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.”

He was probably a little more articulated than most of his peers,
and at that point, too deprived of any further illusions to stand
the excess of their attention without even a single bitter note.
But once he had descended behind the wall of sarcasm, he never
really managed to free himself from a certain stiffness of disposition.

It was not until years later, when Mr. Nothing admitted to the poet
that there was something intimately familiar about that somewhat
long glance, which, he regretted, was lost in a too late realisation.
But even his disappointment was marked with a hint of irony:
“At least we were spared the cold words ‘yours’ and ‘mine’.”

As lofty as it might sound, the prolonged wait to meet destiny
made Mr. Nothing sometimes forget the taint in his chest.
But then a twinge or a waiting list reminder brings him to heel.

If only he could stay a little longer, with all the time to devote
to the Greek of Alexandria, a great lover of ancient history
and young men in secret moments of the forbidden sublime.

But perhaps it is still not too late to at least help the poet
repair his constantly rickety typewriter and mock the seagulls
on the promenade with the increasingly silent Platocrates.

The old business card used as a bookmark
told Mr. Nothing the last time he had attempted
to read the sesquipedalian first-fruits of the poet,
which he now looked at with some disbelief
as he accidentally fumbled that handcrafted volume
from under a pile of papers in his desk drawer.

He barely remembered that, now nameless, face
with incredibly long hair, that had made these lines
come into existence. But although the poet would never
admit it, Mr. Nothing knew that despite his passionate
disputes with Platocrates on the nature of feelings,
he was still as clueless as then, and just as frantic.

There were words that Mr. Nothing did not trust
the dictionary to provide an adequate definition for.
For instance, what was he supposed to say
in response to the question, “Are you happy?”
The problem is not even with that unfortunate “happy,”
but with the one who asks the question.

Mr. Nothing watched the poet tinkering with a typewriter
and Platocrates weighing white and black pebbles in his hands
while looking thoughtfully at a large clay jar standing in front
of him. And since he himself, more out of habit than necessity,
read lines full of foreign-sounding names and events that meant
nothing any more, he suddenly felt as if they were strange triplets
from an incongruous nest. He would have used the word “weirdo”
before, but after learning of its negative connotation, he settled
for “just another man.”