On his way to our world, Mercury forgot to close the door behind him.
There, in
that corner, I see her. Smoking a cigarette the way life itself goes up in
smoke. Seated, solemn, her legs crossed more firmly than Christendom crossed
swords with the Moors. More icon than creed, more certainty than icon: a fact.
I'm addressing you, perfect woman, whose name eludes us, for it is more ancient than the Greek gods themselves.
Why express my soul to you in Portuguese when a
Portuguese soul has already been laid bare in Maritime Ode by Pessoa, so exposed that
he signed it Álvaro de Campos?
A language
had to be chosen, one understood by more than one person. What am I speaking to
you of? The obvious. What is it that all of us speak of, even while denying it,
even while baring our teeth at its absence?
I was
advised that love is within us, that there is no point in seeking it in another
unless it first exists within ourselves. Yet my dog tells me otherwise. In
greeting, that opposite of longing, he shows me that it is through my touch
that he exists; and only in that physical reflection does he become, does he
love, does he lick, does he curl up in his bed.
Oscar Wilde
had already distilled it in his poetic prose, giving voice to the crystal water
in which Narcissus became drunk on himself. Without that other, Narcissus would
never have seen himself reflected. Did he love himself? He loved his
reflection. And drunk alone is no different from dead.
Without
you, what would become of me? Perhaps I would never even know the self existed.
Without the silent, eerie, lonely, foolish aitch of Hexistence, I would be reduced to
mere esitation.
And if you
are listening to me, you are not truly listening. You are treating my words as
afternoon tea.
At the end of yet another shrub of green words—for what colour are words if not green?—, I expose myself and scarcely expose myself at all, waiting for your sharp, blinding scissors to prune me.
