Terra Amata

I DIED

Dead, now. Peaceful as poison in the body of the snake. Violent as the knife in the killer’s hand, burning as love in the skin of a man who possesses a woman. It came one night, in the early morning, and for the last time the little boy called Chancelade was alone. His pale face was turned to the ceiling, and his body arched under the sweat-soaked sheets; his breath whistled through his open mouth. The chill of infinity mounted slowly through the legs, wiping out the living cells one by one. The heart struggled. The tongue fell, a dumb choking mass, into the throat. The ceiling of fog began its slow descent, to crush and grind and cover up for ever and ever. The walls drew in inch by inch, moved by the pitiless mechanism. The dark room had become the size of a ship’s cabin, then of a cupboard, then of a wardrobe, a suitcase, a match-box. Now it is only a tiny hole in the hard rock, a minute hollow not big enough for a fly to live in. And yet for Chancelade it’s huge, big as the waiting lounge of an airport, and the walls are so far away and the ceilings so high that it’s hardly a room at all any more but the world in which one lies lost, floating deserted and hopeless in the cold void, alone, abominably alone.

In the temple of moving walls the body of the boy Chancelade is dying. There is too much space, or not enough. There is too much air, and time, and light, and the solitude is stifling. What you ought to do, now is the time, what you ought to do is stretch out your arms and try to stop the walls. And take your tongue out of your throat and shout as loud as you can, for those who are not there: ‘Help! Help! I need you! Help!’

The white ceiling has become a mirror too. The last mirror before unconsciousness; and what the little boy sees in it is horrible. He sees a face that is very old and very white, with a mouth like a dead fish, dim eyes, and cheeks already darkened by patches of shadow. The face is his own, and he grimaces with pain and rage. Vain mouth, foolish eyes, hollow cheeks dark and unshaven, tousled hair. Forehead white with stupor and streaming with big drops of icy sweat. The ceiling is gently dying, shaken by ridiculous twitches that spread across the white paint in strange concentric waves.

In the middle of the ceiling hangs a black flex with the skull of an electric light bulb at the end of it. A head decapitated, then hung.

The horror of white sheets clinging to the skin, of the pillow slowly engulfing the head like a quicksand. The furniture is dying too. You can hear the sinister creaking as cold paralysis creeps over it. The table splits, the chair is consumed where it stands. Carpets and curtains unravel, undo all the weavers’ work. Everywhere dust falls, and little rivulets of chalky powder run along the cracks of the tiles and disappear into the sea of the floor. Enough! All this must be halted. The damage must be mended, the bits of wood and glass stuck together, the holes stopped up. That’s enough, I tell you! The joke’s gone on long enough, put on the lights again. There’s been enough drama, we’ve been frightened quite enough. Now let everything go back to what it was before, sun, clear air, peace, sea, strength, beauty. Isn’t everything eternal? Isn’t everything normal, quite normal? Who started this grotesque farce? The walls are there, the ceiling’s there, the chairs and tables aren’t dying. There isn’t any face on the white ceiling, there isn’t any skull hanging where the light bulb ought to be. I’m here. I insist. I have my body, my eyes, my mouth, my mind and its thoughts. So that’s enough of this ridiculous comedy! Am I not eternal? I was never born, I’ve always been here, always, always. Birth and death are only fables. As far back as I can remember I’ve always been here. Wasn’t I here in 1952, when it was so hot the asphalt stuck to the soles of your shoes? And in 1943, when there was some sort of war, didn’t I watch the tracer bullets shooting through the sky? And in 1960, when it snowed on the road to London, or 1964, when there was the earthquake in Naples. I was there, I was there all the time. And it was me in 1834 too, crossing the Rocky Mountains westwards and shooting at Jim Rattlesnake’s gang. It was I who crossed the Beresina, who was called Marco Polo, Eric Bloodaxe, or Hui-tsang who died of thirst in the huge Gobi Desert. I took part in the Anabasis, the exoduses, the migrations to the West. It was I who populated Asia, Africa, America. I was there all the time, every day, with the sun and the rain and the wind and the ice and the fire. I was in the dense jungle, and the stretches of white sand. On the mountain-tops, and on the misty lakes. I was everywhere, always. So why is this dust falling down from the walls, why are there these eyeless faces on the ceiling and the windows, why is there this creeping silence, and these sheets, this sweat, this abyss? Let me tell you I’m not afraid, I’m not afraid, I’m not afraid.

My intelligence must be immortal. My eyes have pierced to the heart of the world like a shaft of steel. And all these objects and other bodies and landscapes and trees and animals have been connected with me from the first by the substance of knowledge. They can’t betray me. They can’t abandon me. I have entered into the trunks of the palm-trees and lived in the sweet mounting sap. I have been right inside the shells of insects and felt the faint vibrations of the engine that moves their legs and wings. I have been in the bellies of cows and in the very flesh of whales and octopuses. Yes, I have lived in all those masses of organs, red muscles, fragrant genitals and silky pelts. And I’ve been in the centre of the rocks, caught between narrow layers of flint and granite. I have lived numberless years inside great mountains, hidden under tons of stone and old earth. I have had the bodies of rivers and clouds and air; I have been in stopped-up wells, I have been thrown back by obstacles, I have flown round jagged peaks and over marshy plains. I’ve been seen everywhere, heard everywhere. I’ve been used, given every name and every age. So why have the gates of life been closed on me now, why have these walls been put up?

All I’ve known, and all I’ve failed to understand, all is far away now, leaving nothing but the atrocious void. It’s as if my eyes had been suddenly torn out and the secret links that bound me to the universe broken as the bloody spheres rolled somewhere outside my body, their retinas registering nothing. The sweet fluid has ceased to come and go, the blood of vision flows no more, and I have begun to float, icy and attached to nothing, in huge empty space. The world has shrivelled up, and objects roam about lost and aimless, like fleshless stumps from which life has receded.

So that’s what has happened now to the little boy who was called Chancelade. It was coming for a long time. It was written up everywhere, all around him, on the white skin of women and in the flesh of fruit. It was written inside him too, in the skeleton’s creaking bones, in hair, nails and teeth. The great withdrawal had begun in the very first instant, and the whole of life had only been a series of random gesticulations to slow it down.

The pit had gradually deepened in the too-soft pillows. Cold had penetrated the folds in the sheets, the blankets, the mattress, and gradually enfolded the thin body, making it shudder. Chancelade was still breathing, lying on his back with his mouth open. The raucous sounds filled the room, now quick, now faint and far apart. On the bedside table, among all the medicine bottles and tubes, the clock went on ticking regularly, as if to show what had to be done. On the white dial the hands showed something like six o’clock in the morning. When the hand was on five, you’d been born. When it was on seven, you’d be dead. That was the truth about time, truth itself in the form of a clock with a little steel knob that you turned from left to right every so often to wind it up.

Outside, cars let out sudden growls as they started up. A bus made a sneezing noise as it braked, and there were strange incomprehensible cries. Somewhere in the east the sun was rising behind a twelve-storey building, and the grey and pink light spread over the pavements as usual. It was today, or yesterday. Or perhaps tomorrow. It was here, or there, or farther away still. It was true or false, beautiful or ugly, peaceful or violent. It was infinity, or the gummed square inch of a postage stamp.

The boy Chancelade has started to play the last game of all. In the soiled bed, on the collapsing mattress, he has arranged his body for the last little adventure. He is playing against himself, with his own body, skin and mind. The game is quite simple: you have to lose as slowly as possible, suffering as little as possible. You lose a toe, then another, then another. An ankle, a finger. A word. An image. The trifles disappear one after the other into the dark hole. All that you put down you lose. All that you win you abandon at once to the dark river that strips and laves so carefully, and washes everything away.

It isn’t a new game; in fact, it’s the last episode in a game that began a long time ago, so long ago that no one remembers. Every cigarette that was lit, every word that was spoken, every act performed was a move in the game, and one didn’t know it. It was a mistake to think that there was no enemy; the enemy was there from the very beginning, lurking in the depths of mirrors. He had your mouth, your eyes, your ears, your nose, your chest, your legs, your fingerprints. He had your thoughts and spoke your language, but every word of yours that he echoed automatically cancelled out its original. Your enemy was you, you.

Consciousness had killed consciousness. Sight had turned on itself and gone blind; your light struck against the opacity of the world, rebounded, and annihilated you. Intelligence was also stupidity. Creation was destruction. The light of day contained impenetrable darkness. In every reason there was frenzy. In every word the approach of silence.

They’ve come. They’re gathered in the room, around the bed on which the body now scarcely stirs. The boy suddenly saw them all standing there round him like a wall. He knows their faces but he can’t give them a name. Who is this man with the thin unmoving face and sunken eyes? Who is this black-haired woman holding a handkerchief to her nose? And that other woman with swollen eyelids? That girl in white? Who is this man with thick glasses who takes hold of Chancelade’s wrist? What are all these people called, and what are they doing here? Chancelade tries to slide to the bottom of the bed and disappear through the pillows and the mattress, sink through the floor; but in vain. With horror he sees the crowd slowly growing in the grey room and looking at him. What do they want? What are they looking for? There are faces everywhere, familiar faces become unrecognizable. The harsh light of the new day throws dark shadows on their cheeks and noses and eye-sockets. Under the heavy lids the eyes shine feverishly, like balls of steel. Chancelade is on show. His body, stretched out on the bright white bed, is exposed to curiosity and disgust. Faces are bent towards him, fingers stretched: he is the cynosure, a sort of wax-faced hollow mummy in which everyone tries to see the signs of a brotherhood betrayed. For they have abandoned him. They have denied him. No one wants anything more to do with him, he must be forgotten, forgotten. The last metamorphosis has taken place, in this closed room, in the soft and weak half-light.

And the eyes in the faces round the bed have formed the final mirror, the great sheet of tarnished foil that separates off the world of the living. There beyond the glass they are afraid of nothing. They can watch the old snakeskin writhe in the dust, the grey rag that no longer has a name or a shape. They have all come to perform the rite of exile. Father, mother, wife, friends, mistresses, children, doctors and lawyers. They have emerged from the darkness where they were hiding, and now they keep thrusting, thrusting him away.

Chancelade has slipped back even farther. He has opened his mouth wide, and he shrieks out his curse at the same time as the whistling death-rattle. He cries out, he tries to cry out, but the words cannot get past the opening of his throat. He says, looking at all the marked faces round the bed:

‘What are they doing here? Go away! Go away! I don’t need all these people round me. Tell them to go away, leave me alone. Go away! Go away!’

But no one listens. The ghosts will all stay there till the end. The woman with black hair will lean over to the man and whisper:

‘It’s awful — awful — I can’t bear it …’

‘He ought to be given an injection of caffein, but …’

‘Tell Emmanuel to go away, he oughtn’t to—’

The strange whirlpool has begun. Chancelade looks at the walls going round. He starts to laugh, choking, as the faces of the bystanders keep going past. At one point he says:

‘Hallo? I’m speaking direct to my bladder. Hallo, are you there?’

And he laughs louder, and chokes more. The doctor draws back, saying: ‘… delirious …’

After hours and hours of black and white dizziness, Chancelade sees the face of the little boy approaching the bed. He’s about eleven, with short fair hair and two staring blue-grey eyes that look at him strangely. From the midst of his dream Chancelade sees the little boy who resembles himself, and talks to him softly, stammering a little.

‘What, what’s your name?’

‘I, it …’

‘So you came?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t — I can’t remember.’

‘Yes, you do, it’s easy, it was when you got lost in the forest at Turini, don’t you remember?’

‘Oh yes, there was a, there was a winding road.’

‘And trees everywhere …’

‘And dark, it was dark, wasn’t it? And it rained a little.’

‘And you started to run as fast as you could, and call out.’

‘I–I was frightened …’

‘You thought there were wolves behind every tree.’

‘Yes, I kept on running and calling out.’

‘There, there were people watching you go by.’

‘I didn’t know what I was doing, I …’

‘You kept running till your legs hurt …’

‘And I was calling out … calling out all the time …’

‘That’s right … I remember quite clearly …’

‘Why are you here?’

‘You know that too, don’t you?’

‘I–I’m ill.’

‘Yes.’

‘And all these people, why are there all these people?’

‘Where? I can’t see anyone.’

‘Yes, there, all round me. Tell them to go away.’

‘But there isn’t anyone.’

‘Can’t you see them?’

‘No …’

‘Everything — everything’s so far away now.’

‘But you remember that?’

‘What, the thunderbolt that fell on the mountain?’

‘Yes, and the, the rock that toppled over. Like a bees’ nest.’

‘Yes …’

‘The rain makes a funny noise falling.’

‘Yes, on the corrugated iron roof, and—’

‘And a funny smell too, in the concrete huts.’

‘At Abakaliki, yes, I remember.’

‘And the ant-hills burst open when you hit them with a stick.’

‘Yes, and the red ants bite your legs …’

‘There are pools in the rocks.’

‘Yes, at Belle Croûte Bay …’

‘And the wind blows.’

‘At Highlands, yes, I remember …’

‘Well, I’ve come to say goodbye.’

‘Already?’

‘Yes.’

‘What time is your train?’

‘Half past six.’

‘Oh.’

‘It’s going to be a hot day.’

‘What month is it? August? September?’

‘Right, I must go now.’

‘And what year? What year is it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I can’t remember anything any more, and yet — and yet, it’s there just at the back of my mind.’

‘What?’

‘Those trees, those — mimosas, acacias.’

‘Hmm.’

‘And the black empty forest, with the road that—’

‘It takes such a long time, all that.’

‘Yes, it’s never-ending.’

‘Thousands of days in the sun, and nights, and …’

‘I didn’t think it could ever end.’

‘It doesn’t. Perhaps it’s only beginning.’

‘Perhaps you have to count, to stop it ending?’

‘Yes, perhaps.’

‘One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine …’

‘Right, well …’

‘I shan’t be able to. I–I get mixed up.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘It’s quiet now.’

‘Yes, you can’t hear anything any more.’

‘And there’s no one here.’

‘It makes you want to sleep for years.’

‘Yes.’

‘Right, I must go.’

‘Perhaps we’ll see each other again?’

‘Yes, perhaps.’

‘I hope so.’

‘Right, goodbye.’

‘Goodbye.’

‘So long.’

‘Goodbye.’

And now the boy Chancelade was quite alone. All around him had disappeared. The brutal faces had melted into the shadow, and the shape of the child who was like him had slipped softly away into the mist. The room had vanished too: the walls had suddenly disappeared, and the ceiling had melted away among the molecules of the empty sky. Chancelade was alone in the centre of a huge plain, lying on a gently floating bed. The horizons had drawn back, the sky had hollowed its grey gulf even deeper, and the earth was only a heaving paste of sand and water.

Rubber earth, sea of moving particles, liquid trees and stones and air! Everything is gradually retiring, like an indrawn breath. And the blood is removed drop by drop from the exhausted body, each pulsation taking away instead of giving a flush of warmth.

Now is the moment of departure, yes, now.

The vile trap has been put there on the table by the hand of men, and the terrible yet indifferent tragedy is in progress. For flies, for example:

A cake that is irresistibly attractive to

FLIES …

and FATAL!

As a magnet attracts steel and a candle moths, so FLY CAKE irresistibly attracts flies. And it rids you of them once and for all! This new American discovery will kill every fly in the house in the space of a few seconds.

A MASSACRE!

Yes, it’s true: no fly can escape, for every one is irresistibly drawn to FLY CAKE, and FLY CAKE kills flies on contact.

Why a cake?

Everyone knows that you can’t catch flies with vinegar.

American chemists therefore concluded that the best way was to offer them something they liked; i.e. something sweet.

That is why FLY CAKE is prepared as a real treat for flies. It is made of ingredients that give off a scent perceptible to flies alone. As soon as they smell it they rush towards it. But they are rushing to their death.

As soon as they alight on FLY CAKE flies roll over on their backs, and in five seconds they are dead.

What has happened?

What has happened is that as soon as their feet touch FLY CAKE flies are paralysed. The poison in this product directly attacks their nervous system. The advantages of this method are obvious. First of all death is almost instantaneous. And above all the flies don’t go away and die somewhere else; they expire on FLY CAKE itself! But FLY CAKE has other virtues too. It never wears out. Thanks to carefully researched stabilizing elements, the product retains 100 per cent effectiveness as long as the smallest fragment of it remains. So FLY CAKE can last for months and kill thousands of flies.

FLY CAKE gives astonishing results: thousands of victims in only a few minutes. Once in place it ensures continuous slaughter day after day without the slightest further attention.

Murder! Murder everywhere! All over the world, in broad daylight, in the terrible light of the sun, murders are committed. Flies take five seconds to die; five times the length of eternity. Everywhere knives are sharpened and razors ready to cut throats. Spines crack, bones break, flesh is sundered by vice-like jaws. Warm blood flows down the throat, the reeking blood of death. Guns spit out their bullets, which go straight into the panting body instead of the shoulder. The wounded ox falls bellowing to its knees. The horse rears as the gun goes off in its ear! The fish suffocates on the rotting planks of the hold, its open mouth still trying to eject the hook that tore away half its jaw. The snail eats the poison and goes stiff. The weapons of destruction are everywhere, in peaceful hands. But they will kill. They will make a hole in the skin and root out the marrow of life. The white stalls have been set up, the hooks are ready to exhibit the murder. The hatchet will split the ribs, the sharp knife slit up the rosy lungs. They are there on all sides, menacing, mechanical, mallets, iron bars, garottes, sacks, harpoons, banderillas, saws, daggers. Buckets of boiling oil, pots of boiling water where shrimps will writhe an instant before being fixed in a red cramp with bulging eyes and shrivelled legs. Green poisons, white poisons. Traps that suddenly clamp down on the neck of the little mouse-grey creature, strangling lakes, drowning pits. There is a sweet scent of lavender in the air, but the perfume is one that’s deadly. Bright-coloured ribbons hang from the ceiling, and on them hundreds of insects are trapped by the legs and die of hunger and exhaustion. Car wheels on the roads seek eagerly after dogs, and sharp stones cut off the heads of toads. Three children keep turning an octopus over and over on a slab of stone in the sun; and on the oozing star of flesh the organs stifle and death begins to shine like a pearl.

Sordid violence is everywhere displayed. Everywhere there are hard-nailed hands strangling and mutilating. Eyes look on avidly at the icy yet burning spectacle; the world is nothing but food. Murder approaches unhurriedly along the road of round links that leads towards us. It’s nearly here. It’s here. The pale plate for the sacrifice waits on the white table with silver knives and glasses of cut crystal. Then someone throws on to it the square of meat with its dead cells slightly oozing blood. Eat up. But this time, this last time, to your helpless horror, it’s yourself you are served with. It’s you that’s going to be eaten!

For countless years, devouring years, day after day he committed all these murders. Hour by hour he burned, uprooted, sliced, crushed, drowned, raped. He drank the blood, he ate the body of others. Now he must pay the price. He must slowly fall into the pit where the mandibles wait. Earth and air cry out, water and fire call for their revenge. The dread game will go on, but he will be playing no longer. He will be divided up, and the blind worm will have this part, and the roots of the briar that. There’s nothing more to be said now. Chancelade has left the world of picture postcards and red-headed matches. He’s away. He has been extracted. Who was it who thought something? Who was it that said a few words? Who wrote ‘I love you’ on a cigarette paper and then smoked it? Who picked a flower and put it in a glass of water? Who ate a vanilla ice on September 14, 1966, at twenty-five minutes to midnight, thinking that it was an eternal ice-cream cone, an eternal ice, an eternal yellow-white flavour? Who believed in God? Who studied art? Who lived the 946,900000th second of his life as if it must be the unique and only and sempiternal one? Who drew a horse, a pear, a naked woman lying on her back, who wrote about stones and waste land and women as if that was all you had to do to become immortal? Who fought in a war? Who had children, grandchildren? Who posed for photographs, smiling slightly, unafraid of the grimacing countenance shining faintly through the negative? Who did all that, eh? Who?

But that’s enough of inventing. There is no Chancelade, there never was any Chancelade. All there ever was was me, writing these words and knowing they hid nothing. As the black scribble advances over the white page like manifold footprints, the only truth that motivated it escapes and is lost. And in the seething mass of untruth there appears the other truth, the one that covers everything, digests everything, celebrates everything, a sort of darkness.

The world is coming to an end, it is on its deathbed. Suddenly on the surface of the earth the great dome of light has exploded like a volcano. A colourless vortex has risen upwards, spreading a black cloud that gives off flashes of fire. The giant flame stood there a moment, as if it would never disappear. Then the rampart of the air fell away, rending all in its path. Time seemed to draw suddenly back, engulfing countless ages. A scorching wind passed over the earth, throwing shadows on the creeping desert. The circle grew larger and larger. And that was the last crime of my life, the greatest and most terrible of all. I didn’t say anything, I didn’t do anything. I was just there in the dazzling circle that spread out over the earth, the circle of my intelligence and my hatred. It was the last of my wars, the one I didn’t wage alone, the one that everyone waged with me. That day, some where, in some book or other, an anonymous voice relates the history of that war. And it is my voice, mine:

Ionic radiations are released during the explosion in various ways, including neutrons, gamma and beta rays. A small part of the explosion causes the rapid radiation of neutrons, which have a high penetrating power but lose their energy at once on passing through matter. More important is the gamma radiation, which also has high powers of penetration. Beta rays do not travel more than a few yards. When a nuclear explosion takes place in the air the products of the fission or fusion are dispersed and contamination takes place by fall-out. Surface or submarine explosions are more dangerous because of direct exposure and inhaling.

Symptoms: The principal effect of radiation is a cellular attack leading to necrosis of the tissues. Erythron and lymphoid tissues and the nuclei of growing cells are the most vulnerable. Haemorrhage may be produced as a result of vascular disturbance, thrombocytopenia, and perhaps the presence of an anticoagulant in the blood. Temporary or permanent sterility is frequent. Little is known about the carcinogenic or genetic effects of ionic radiation. Contamination by radioactive dust can cause cancer, and isotopes lodged in the bones remain active for a long period. An increased incidence of hereditary defects is to be feared in future generations.

In case of thermo-nuclear war, losses can be divided into four groups according to their seriousness. But the clinical picture must also take into account burns and wounds caused by the explosion:

Group 1. After exposure to intense radiation, nausea, vomiting, and shock appear in a few hours. There is increasing loss of weight, fever, diarrhoea, and death from toxaemia in two weeks.

Group 2. In the case of less severe exposure the symptoms take three weeks to appear. Loss of hair, aplastic anaemia, pneumonia, gastro-enteritis, and death at the end of six weeks.

Group 3. In those who survive the 6th week the anaemia becomes chronic and many die of pneumonia, enteritis, and other forms of secondary infection.

Group 4. In benign cases leucopenia, diarrhoea and loss of hair may be the only irregularities.

The dazzling halo has filled the whole sky, which now rises pear-shaped. A face appears in the patch of incandescent light, a mild sad face with indistinguishable features. The snow-white face has taken the place of the sun, and smiles down mysteriously on the world. Everything goes towards it, automatically attracted and absorbed by that powerless plenitude. The last gleam of light has set forth its round mirror. On it, in it, vision can at last submerge itself, and with it liberty. The world is coming to an end in this ball of fire. Beyond, there is nothing. After this futile moment in which one rather unimportant person is undone, it is the end of the universe made visible; the fated end of ages and ages of civilization, of hope, literature, love and faith.

The great sphere shines dully at the other end of infinity. This too had to happen. It was written. It was written in the very heart of the long adventure of men, this threat of dissociation and chaos. Already we are thousands of miles away. We have fled this place, this time, and we look out of the darkness of space at what is going on down there, far away, at the other end of the dark room. All wars have become one. For a second they all burn and pound together, then like a flare of straw die down, and night may begin again.

In the room full of dense shadow the projector has suddenly been switched on, and absolute light flows towards you in a spiral. Here is the last crime, the last anger of time with its trembling hour- and minute-hands. The moth, caught in the merciless beam, has begun its dance of death. It flies blindly towards the centre of the world that calls it. It goes towards the blazing hole, to force the door that separates it from eternity. The fire utters its continuous strident cry, which nobody can resist. It orders you to hurry, to rush to the gaping mouth, to melt into its laugh, to be crushed and burned so that nothing is left but that devouring furnace. Like the moth, like Chancelade, like him, you and I; all men return to the fire that conceived them. In the white light is the secret. In each nucleus of each atom is the secret that explodes and liberates. There are suns innumerable. There are nothing but volcanoes everywhere. It is towards them, towards all of them that the last consciousness turns its eyes. While in the distance but also near at hand there floats vaguely the powerless face whose soft sad smile means nothing; while seas evaporate, rocks flow in long gleaming rivers, and the universe explodes in a single but infinite conflagration; the spirit, free at last, no longer anything, plunges into matter, burns with it, performs strange arabesques with it, becomes a particle of light, an anonymous speck of real light. Total is the last word. Vanished, accepted. Dead, dead. Born into boundless life, into a life that is no longer inner nor outer, but at last, and for ever I hope, itself.

On the earth by chance

I was born

a living man

I grew up

inside the drawing

the days went by

and the nights

I played all those games

loved

happy

I spoke all those languages

gesticulating

saying incomprehensible words

or asking indiscreet questions

in a region that resembled hell

I peopled the earth

to conquer the silence

to tell the whole truth

I lived in the immensity of consciousness

I ran away

then I grew old

I died

and was buried