THE GATE

Excerpt XXIII

We focused on that detail to avoid looking a bit further

at the jumping thief, noon hour in the strange house,

women would come back very late from their shopping,

rooms still warm from the sleep of tired people who

went to their work early in the morning;

while you’re at home

something confirms you’re there using thin wires kept in

the drawers

there is also the sewing machine as if brought from

the moon yesterday;

they had hard time passing it through the door, Alexander

scratched his knee;

they pulled up one of his trouser legs to his knee, they

applied some iodine to it;

women turned silent as if something had been missed

or over silenced

the same sadness of no, the final no, secretly said, like

the nail which scratches wax off the black coat,

the folded finger that hits softly the window when

no one goes by outside

the vague outline of a quest in the hand’s movement

the hesitation of grabbing or putting down the glass

what you can discern amid all the hurrahs (especially

then) and amid the mourning (especially then). The

beautiful, aloof, delivered corpse:

they undressed him, washed him with vinegar,

wrapped him in strips of white linen, a mark on his

cheek underscored the internal beautiful that was

gone

leaving the unbelievable void, perhaps more beautiful

than what was gone

leaving the unsupervised filling free.

The wind quietened down during the night;

Maria, holding a candle, went down the marble stairs

to the second basement

the silent dampness ascended to her face, it moistened

the stones of the wall;

the flame of the candle was cut in four, joined, then

cut again in six

the four corpses in the glass coffins weren’t moved

at all, other than the left arm of the first which had

stirred a bit onto his chest

where the black button shone almost a red hue, perhaps

it was the reflection from the thud of the dice the guards

cast on the third floor —

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