In my fantasies I’m alive and well, going about the world,
but in actual fact I’m lying in the house of the soul.
It’s people that keep appearing to me here
and not angels. Talking in human language they say
the words: “Good day, how are things?”
And I say: “Fine, thank you, I’m seeing things.”
Every day I take a look, not in brilliance, in the light
of day or dusk, at shapes and colours;
at all the sacred shades in between
God and Satan, but not at either of them.
I touch her face as gently
as if Cain could not have murdered Abel,
blissful without his ecstasies.
I have such banal delusions (the smell of grass and the twitter of swallows)
that the doctor gets bored listening to me.
Suddenly he opens the chasm of his mouth,
and tells me that these symptoms
will vanish soon, and then I’ll have nothing.
“You’ll have Nothing”, he assures me.



Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones