MIDNIGHT STROLL

In the end, afraid of the poems and the many cigarettes,

he went out at midnight to the suburb-a simple, quiet

walk along closed fruit stores, among

good things with their true, vague dimensions.

Having caught a cold from the moon, he wiped his nose

now and then with a paper napkin. He lingered

there before the pungent odor of fresh brick,

before the invisible horse tied to a cypress tree,

before the granary's padlock. Ah, like this-he said-

among things that demand nothing of you-

and a small balcony shifting in the air

with a solitary chair. On the chair

the dead woman's guitar has been left upside down;

on the guitar's back moisture sparkles secretly—

it is sparks such as these that prevent the world from dying.