He was the one, I repeat, he, not me,
who, myopic and careful since birth,
zealously sought, like that Argentine bookworm, 
to find in the library of existence one truth 
out of those that lie dormant in earth, 
in salt quarries, in love's moisture. That truth 
did exist: it shone while melting away. 
Maybe for that reason he, a polygamous prince  
of light, a lover of heavenly bodies, a miser at times, 
sly as a fox at times, but also an author, all his life 
wanted to write a totally different book in which
a jagged wave in prostration breaks,
a lapis lazuli evening in Russian screams,
the sand soars up from the living floor of the sea,
the blind, scared molluscs open their folds,
timidly trying to grasp what is out there, in the world 
(a rook? a crook? a creek?), and to flatter God 
in dumb humility strain
the moist rudiments of their brain. O man,
follow suit, insist and claim: the light blue  
has ceded place to the inky tint, the breast
shelters but an empty shell that seems 
to be prodding the prodigal blood of the surf. 
. . . gradually he grows decrepit, with no complaints;
absent-minded, turns up the collar of his coat, 
breathes the dank wind under a clock. As he stands 
under the round dial, under a cross, he knows: 
no one will ever read the cherished tome. 
No one, for that matter, will ever write it.