Hour of the Shepherds
And Uncle Lampis was always quiet, as if already
dead or like resurrected with all his death (inside
the holes of his buttons we could see four tinies,
dried up balls of soil); resurrected or as if he wasn’t
even born yet? Such undefined he was. Then, what
could he lose? What could he be afraid of? He had
nothing that belonged to him. For this chicken and
birds perched on his shoulders or knees, totally
comfortable, as they perch on the naked trees or
sit on the rocks.
Him, though lived off others, he was bleeding us
(was all this perhaps his? We, those, everyone
and everything — his?)
He almost caused us to vanish, even our nice,
light sadness vanished and perhaps our sadness
sustained him.
We, the fools, narrated to him all our small and
great pains
and the others, the tiny ones about that hay in
George’s hair. And he didn’t say a word, full of
silent leniency, forgiveness, perhaps understanding,
full of an insatiable thoughtfulness, so much so, that
soon as he put his two fingers in his tobacco bag, we
knew that he would pull out of it a small light blue
fish, a one-eyed fish with a golden eye. And truly
he would pull it, then he wrapped it hastily,
indifferently in a small square piece of paper. Then
he would keep quiet.
