from Night Visitor

Murder

“Who is it?” “relax, it’s no one,” he said, flies were drowning in the wine dregs, covering the autumnal glow with black blemishes, “where are we going?” I asked, “I played you,” he said, “and I lost,”

the statues were beckoning me, but there was something inexplicable about it, how do they even know? I wondered, and at night I would bend down and ask, “are you alright?” for I had not buried my dead,

my sin was that I sought to break free of fate, I refilled the glasses, “drink up, scumbag!” I said, we fought fiercely on the rug, and when he threw me out the window a woman in the distance opened the skylight and enveloped me with her eyelids,

then the moon appeared, I had to hurry, I had to hide all those corpses swamping the basement—my God, how many times had they killed me!

and as I opened the door I noticed the spilt wine on the table as though it were our distant journey, “if I return, do you think we’ll meet up again?” he asked, “yes,” I replied, “for I will always be found on the fringes.”
 

 

The Parish Priest

The following night he returned, and as he was going up I thought of the blows to Jesus’ face, these too now joined in his ascension, “who, after all, are you?” I asked, “I was always elsewhere,” he replied, and the walls cracked from the mortal sin,

knelt down on the floor, I licked that stain from an old children’s party, a strong wind blew through the hallway, the airshaft was crammed with voices, bloodied rags, maidservants groaned in the basement,

some crime or other had been committed at home for years, and when blood came streaming all the way down the steps I began to regard my days as dead lice on the shabby coffin of the destitute,

and at night I’d travel with the old couch, the walls were also opened of course by the candle’s reflections, but of even greater help were the humiliations, 

and when it dawned, the parish priest wrapped up my severed head in a newspaper, like a borrowed icon.


 

Voiceless Faces

“Don’t go,” I said to him, but he had already set off with the other convicts, the only thing he left me was his hand, which often held me at the edge of the bridge, a sick horse was decomposing by the side of the road, and at night I’d hear the weathervanes helping it turn to its other side,

I remembered the first night after we buried father—how I hated him for playing that filthy part of a footman, opening our door to the great darkness,

desolation, and the wall crevices alone made visible the frightening, voiceless faces we occasionally pass by.

I was so lonely there that I heard the other voices, and after dark the dead would steal my blanket and lie down outside the door, until day would break and the cock’s crow would be crucified upon me.

 


Futile Road

In the evening I’d follow him through squalid neighbourhoods, we’d descend the stairs, a woman would be murmuring some hymn, and in her hands she held the treasure that goes from pauper to pauper as night falls.

We returned after many years, a faded sign lay in the corner, as soon as we touched it the lost road rushed to strangle us, “now,” he said to me, “we will go far away,” “but don’t you see,” I replied, “they’ve forgotten us,” “that’s why,” he said,

and the traffic lights were looking at us with their large vacant eyes, like those who have nowhere to go and stand before God,

I remembered the little girl who cried as I undressed her, and when she hung herself the next day, she came back at night to my bed, “today I grew up,” she said, “why don’t you want me?”

I quietly closed the door, I no longer had a home, only a trampled hat in the middle of the road, “is this the right way?” I asked, “what would you want to do with it?” he replied,

and in the evening the gravediggers returned hunched over, as though they had divined that you were not the deceased, that they had buried the wretched man following you, a step outside the mystery.

 


Transfiguration

“No, we didn’t see him,” said the doorkeeper’s wife, and the moon emerged ghastly pale over the hill, I knew he was hiding, but I would’ve recognized him from his large shroud that touched the edges of the city and from the violin cavity into which his soul had slid the night they were trampling on him,

and suddenly I saw him inside the room, he was climbing the scaffold slowly slowly while the nightwatchman’s lantern pierced his side, I saw him, I tell you, calm and collected like the dead who have at last done away with the pain of squandering God,

“open!” I shouted, “they’re killing someone in there!” the old woman opened and he was down on his knees in the heavens, licking their shoes, “it’s just us two left,” he said, a whisper then came from afar, an overpowering longing to see father again, but the years had passed and innocence now staggered like an angel suffering under the weight of its wings,

“don’t give me away,” he said, and as he opened his coat I saw the demon that had devoured his entire body, and his head was now propped up on the hand of the anchorite

praying in the desert.


 

The Musician

Often at night, without realizing it, I would arrive at another city, there’d be no one except an old man who once dreamed of becoming a musician and was now sitting half naked in the rain—with his coat he had covered an old, imaginary violin on his lap, “can you hear it?” he asked, “yes,” I replied, “I could always hear it,”

while down the street the statue was recounting the true journey to the birds.