I'm Becoming the Pillar of Salt

(Detail, Mosaic of Ravenna, "Lot's Wife")

I’m becoming the pillar of salt.
The last glance to Gomorrah.

Orpheus guilty glimpse over the shoulder,
the last long look to things not done,
to the Styx and
forward.
Forward…
to the sadness of wrong turns taken at the wrong times.

Opportunities lost as soon as they are found,
time passing by like a thief in the night…

watching the spectacle of being and
living as the silent detached witness of myself.

Cold
distant
and aloof.


I haven’t slept for five years.

All,

All days
mornings afternoons and nights,

all,
together,
one after the other.
All days and all nights,
are the same, under the harsh insomniac light.

The hours pass
(dirge-like as in a prison)
as I walk down the garden locked inside the walls of my house.

The light darts yellow trough the window and onto the trees,
as if shielding them from reality…

Yellow restless light that counts time passed between vigil and feverish dreams.
A light of ruse and mischief,
artistry and puppetry,
light made by a slight of hands, smoke and mirrors.
reminding me that,
from now on,
there is nothing here but the ghosts of reason.

In the phantasmal light that scars the trees,
I sit grass like and canopy looking…
tall and distant….
Taut and alert.

trees.

I watch them green and stupid,
tended and erect,
darting upwards towards the sky…

silently intent on photosynthesis.

Inside them a myriad of organisms, moved by the simplest tropisms.
grow and move,
restlessly and mercilessly,
unmoving and uncaring.
oblivious to everything but their growth.



All.
All this,
All so foreign.
All cold and unaware.

A universe of vast silences and expanding indifference.

Cold,
Cool,
Beautiful.