HOUR OF THE SHEPHERDS
…The landscape inverted itself, each jutting item turned
into an indentation, internal trees, internal houses, faces,
statues, all internal like the forms you pour gypsum
to create trees, houses, faces, statues from the start,
in multiples, exact replications, always made of gypsum,
of course, or metal.
However, they retained all their colours, perhaps a little
more moist, deep, a bit grayish, purple, olive oil green,
brown; and the mountains with a minimal green hue
of the expected spring.
This faceless diaphaneity spread out to the outside
levels too. The bus, almost empty, passed by
the seashore; only the ticket collector was visible
behind the windows like an ark made of glass. He
always kept the tickets in his bag, wilted tickets, with
a code number at their edges, that 2 and a half. And
the display windows of the upper neighbourhoods
resembled glass boxes of winter, diaphanous,
diaphanous and Santa Claus with his cottony beard
stood on the ladder and changed the sign and year.
