The Glassblower
(The First Movement)
The girl asks her father: how do you write?
He was blind.
– I gaze inside myself for a long time till I perceive a hole on the page. I place a word on the hole. I blow into the word to make it a little bigger. This is how I sometimes get a poem.
– And then?
– Nothing, except that I might fall in the hole and vanish.
The Glassblower
(The Second Movement)
The girl asks her father: How do you see your way?
He was blind.
– I stray inside myself for a long time till I feel the thread of light. I put my mouth on the light. I blow inside the thread to make it bigger. This is how I sometimes get a path.
– And then?
– Nothing, except that I may go to the end of the thread and never reach my destination.
The White Graveyard
Upon aging,
elephants hear the drum of death:
dom, dom, dom
and proceed
to the elephants’ graveyard
here or there
in the abyss
where nothing is heard but the moans of ivory.
– And poets, the girl asks,
do they age?
– Yes,
enormously.
But they hear
the drum of life:
dom, dom, dom
and they proceed
to the poets’ graveyard
here or there
in the abyss
where nothing is seen but
a white
paper
thrown
on the path of elephants.
The Red Fish
Shadow in water, a girl dreams to become a fish.
Let me think of her color, she whispers. I am a red fish.
– What shall I do? Maybe I dance with oysters.
– Do I have a mirror to brush my hair?
No. I should look upward. Always upward
to spin a story for winter
out of sun rays.
– Do I get hungry too?
No. I pick fruits from the sea, such as
this beautiful flower.
(The hook was nearby, like a lily shining under
the fisherman’s shadow)
The fish takes the bait, the girl yells: Ah . . .
I wish I’d known that life sometimes rots
from its dreams
the way a fish rots from the head down.