After Babel

Seven short texts I wrote in 2005, which I had completely forgotten about and just found by chance. Fascinating to find that the idea of using the same syntagms in various orders to generate a narrative and different meanings had started already then (nº1, 4).

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1. Lemon

White             fallen            bleeding

Concrete         grey              water

Licking           newspaper

Wind

Grey                bleeding

Newspaper      licking           concrete

White

fallen

water

2. Door

In the wasteland left alone

half standing in defiance

to those that had disposed of it.

It was not any more a passage,

a landmark between two worlds.

It had ceased to be.

Slowly devoured by oxide, that

invisible army of worms,

eating it up.

Like the slow fire of the stake

burned the flesh of the impious,

slowly,

eating it up.

3. Why you walk away

Words,

useless myriad of stars

in the constellation of language.

Desperate reaching gestures

trying to bridge anywhere,

out.

How could one reach

the unreachable,

the other,

you…

with

those desperate,

dignified reaching gestures,

that myriad of useless human cries?

How to say

how I long for my soul

to bathe in the dark, secret lake of your eyes?

4. Street Seller

Hours              lost

newspapers                        beer

old glasses                          worn out

Life                 lost

Crumbling                 look

confused                            walk

Lost                papers

hours                                 beer

worn out                            life

Lost                glasses

Confused                  hours

Crumbling                 life

5. Because I doubt

It is because I doubt,

that everything is unclear.

Paralysed, I doubt

suspicious of my right to doubt, even;

sweating, consumed in uncertainty.

Do you doubt, too?

Do you see my doubts?

Do you…?

It is because I doubt, I know

that everything seems to take so long:

Do you…?

Did you…

doubt…

…from the very beginning?

6. Milk

In one corner

at the side of the station

an old milk pack.

Torn,

eroded by rain and rats,

kicked by a mumbling commuter.

The remains of its content still around it,

Like the urine of a dead man…

…or an exploded lung.

7. The Old Man

The old man sits quietly on the carriage.

The early light of the sun is falling down from a confused sky, breaking up into a constellation of little golden reflexes in the windows of the buildings as the train goes by.

In the far distance, Canary Wharf and the other towers appear like a ghostly fleet of metallic ships coming out of the mist; almost out of one’s own future memories…

The carriage is full of people reading busily, full of a barely contained energy. The old man sits still, his grey eyes look still into the void. After some minutes the train stops: Liverpool St., final destination.

The mass of people moving out like an organic, chaotic tide cannot rock his stillness. The old man moves slowly, incredibly self-absorbed.

Lost in the strange bliss of someone irretrievably tired of oneself, he is waiting; waiting with the eternal smile of the stars… to stop being.

Filed under: In English, Literature by admin