I like rainy days, when the gentle patter of raindrops on the leaves of the tree outside my window replaces the song of Malebolge rising from the school yard across the street at lunch break. Does that make me a curmudgeon?
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qui dolorem ipsum, quia dolor sit
De finibus bonorum et malorum, Marcus Tullius Cicero
How can I not pity
the old beggar Cicero
for his most read text
being Lorem ipsum?
But I guess that suffices
for an indifficile reader
content with the life
of a tourist—myself.
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With the abundance of days,
a true existence is never far
for an honest person—
only twenty years away
or a page
if you’re lucky.
But as a piano teacher is not a pianist—
let alone a composer,
especially if their instrument,
crammed into the corner of the room,
is reduced to a mere flowerpot stand—
a man is only as humane.
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I can’t remember if I ever wanted to say something in particular, if my words had any intended purpose, at least not since the very beginning, when the first verse coincided with the end of puberty and was meant to impress a girl. It did not. I wonder what she’d say now—not that it would matter, and her face has been lost to the mists of time anyway. Perhaps that’s what always drew me to what Socrates said about poets in the ‘Apology’. At least, after more than three decades, my writing—although not a perpetuum mobile—is as close to self-perpetuating as one gets.
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The left-handed fascinate me—
I call them the mirror folk—
but I’m still not sure if their otherness is real
or just perceived, like my reflection
blurred by gauche epigraphs
and recherché humility.
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I live by the river yet never walk its banks.
Not that they’d miss me particularly—
after all, I would just be another pair of soles
trampling on their peace between the tides.
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A creature of the word—
doesn’t that have a nice ring to it?
Who would have thought that we’d turn
into creatures of paper?
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I like the sun in full bloom
to have a cloud cover
with only occasional breaks,
as it is less intimidating that way—
at least on Sundays.
I probably should have gone
to the beach
like I used to,
but I spent the late morning in an armchair
by the window,
reading
and snacking on almonds instead,
and now I’m playing
with a word processor.
Why is it that I’d rather write a verse
than live it?
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If life, instead of years, were measured by volumes,
what would mine be like—
reminiscent of À la recherche du temps perdu
or Homo faber. Ein Bericht?
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hidden pilcrow 