Is the world something more
than just a place to leave the dead?

Is the rain something more
than just a drive through it?

Is the reading of these words more
than flashes of light?

Is loneliness something other
than the company of strangers?

Is suicide a sign of something else
than a subway train
speeding through a tunnel
under the street level Yom Kippur
reconciliation?


I lie back, out of the shower,
with my heavy Indian blanket
over my body
after the regular forty kilometers
of bicycle exercise,
with a slight low back pain,
probably resulting from hauling
too heavy suitcases
traveling down here

The bedroom with its heavy speakers
fills existence
with Bernard Parmegiani's Enfer
from Divine Comédie
on a double CD
shared with François Bayle's Purgatoire

Anna remains silent on the fifth day

I am flying low
across these late years,
these misty epilogues
where danger looms
and venomous thoughts spring off
like grasshoppers,
long since died down whispers
out of diverging fates
still signalling like the Voyager twins
out of unreachables and forevers