Transmutation
What escapes through the windows to the night outside
to an unclear dimension, that is ours, is carefully hidden
in our pockets, along with the keys, in many drawers
along with the correspondence, pictures, and newspaper
cut-offs and stars that are the same as the chairs in a hall
that visitors’ empties after the funeral. The chairs,
mixed up as they are, remain in their lonely tidiness
indifferent about a line, about a priority. And then you
can sit on any of them, comfortably, in a friendly and
no preconceived distance from this dead man or the other,
and while you take a cigarette and you light the match,
suddenly, you see your gesture aimed at you. You stop.
You change your movement, offering the light to them,
so they can light their cigarette first. For a moment, their
shoes gleam in a new black colour, and the
