I am too alone in the world, and not alone enough to make every minute holy. I am too tiny in this world, and not tiny enough just to lie before you like a thing, shrewd and secretive. I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will, as it goes toward action, and in the silent, sometimes hardly moving times when something is coming near, I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone. I want to be a mirror for your whole body, and I never want to be blind, or to be too old to hold up your heavy and swaying picture. I want to unfold. I don't want to stay folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am a lie. And I want my grasp of things true before you. I want to describe myself like a painting that I looked at closely for a long time, like a saying that I finally understood, like the pitcher I use every day, like the face of my mother, like a ship that took me safely through the wildest storm of all. The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn't hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother’s watch. And look! My last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn't hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster. – Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan't have lied. It’s evident the art of losing’s not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster. Like the painting of a sorrow, a face without a heart. That is the way leaves fall around a tree in autumn, a tree unaware of the rain running down its sides, of the sun or the frost, and of life gradually retreating inward. g The tree does not die. It waits. The amber light came on. Two of the cars ahead accelerated before the red light appeared. At the pedestrian crossing the sign of a green man lit up. The people who where waiting began to cross the road, stepping on the white stripes painted on the black surface of the asphalt, there is nothing less like a zebra, however, that is what it is called. The motorists kept an impatient foot on the clutch, leaving their cars at the ready, advancing, retreating like nervous horses that can sense the whiplash about to be inflicted. The pedestrians have just finished crossing but the sign allowing the cars to go will be delayed for some seconds, some people maintain that this delay, while apparently so insignificant, has only to be multiplied by the thousands of traffic lights that exist in the city and by the successive changes of their three colours to produce one of the most serious causes of traffic jams bottleneck, to use the more current term. The green light came on at last, the cars moved off briskly, but then it became clear that not all of them were equally quick off the mark. The car at the head of the middle lane has stopped, there must be some mechanical fault, a loose accelerator pedal, a gear lever that has stuck, problem with the suspension, jammed brakes, breakdown in the electric circuit, unless he has simply run out of gas, it would not be the first time such a thing has happened. The next group of pedestrians to gather at the crossing see the driver of the stationary car wave his arms behind the windshield, while the cars behind him frantically sound their horns. Some drivers have already got out of their cars, prepared to push the stranded vehicle to a spot where it will not hold up the traffic, they beat furiously on the closed windows, the man inside turns his head in their direction, first to one side then the other, he is clearly shouting something, to judge by the movements of his mouth he appears to be repeating some words, not one word but three, as turns out to be the case when someone finally manages to open the door, I am blind. Without light I am not only invisible, but formless as well; and to be unaware of one's form is to live a death. I myself, after twenty years, did not become alive until I discovered my invisibility. Oh Lord, it’s time, it’s time. It was a great summer. Lay your shadow now on the sundials, and on the open fields let the winds go! Give the tardy fruits the hint to fill; give them two more Mediterranean days, drive them on into their greatness, and press the final sweetness into the heavy wine. Whoever has no house by now will not build. Whoever is alone now will remain alone, will wait up, read, write long letters, and walk along sidewalks under large trees, not going home, as the leaves fall and blow away. But does understanding bring happiness? I suspect the reverse is true. The privileges of knowledge have to be bought at the cost of the consolations of ignorance. …A sharpness, a sourness, a personal animosity took the place of reason. In spite of my sadness I had sometimes to smile at the violence with which people spoke. Their opinions were basically exaggerations, conceits, fears. But the amusement that comes from watching people make fools of themselves isn't good. There’s too much malice in it to please a heart more in key with simple joys. One can feel a mocking gaiety and still remain miserable. I think unhappiness may even engender such feelings. Sour pleasures feed off sour hearts. …Youth cannot qualify. For it, everything is either good or bad, whereas the rock upon which old age founders is usually the discovery that nothing is altogether one thing or the other. Once I saw a prizefighter boxing a yokel. The fighter was swift and amazingly scientific. His body was one violent flow of rapid rhythmic action. He hit the yokel a hundred times while the yokel held up his arms in stunned surprise. But suddenly the yokel, rolling about in the gale of boxing gloves, struck one blow and knocked science, speed and footwork as cold as a well-digger's posterior. The smart money hit the canvas. The long shot got the nod. The yokel had simply stepped inside of his opponent's sense of time. Being apart and lonely is like rain. It climbs toward evening from the ocean plains; from flat places, rolling and remote, it climbs to heaven, which is its old abode. And only when leaving heaven drops upon the city. It rains down on us in those twittering hours when the street turn their face to the dawn, and when two bodies who have found nothing, disappointed and depressed, roll over; and when two people who despise each other have to sleep together in one bed – that is when loneliness receives the rivers….

c C c R r i Ic c k K k e e T t   0 1 . 19 . 19 7 2

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