χαμαίμηλον

On the counter was a glass bowl green as the sea...This gentle hour, this comfortable room, this death. For everything, in fact, every plate and object, utensil, bowl, illustrated what did not exist; they were fragments borne forward from the past, shards of a vanished whole. We live untruth amid evidence of untruth. How does it accumulate, how does it occur?

--James Salter.

It was like a sledge tethered in the still of night, tethered like a wild animal becalmed. Shapes slowly crystallize, finding their form as the snow silently falls all around. The slowly accumulating ice on the window pane, frozen breath, like time itself. Only a flicker of colour remains there, the memory of the night before-sparkling conversation, the clinking of glass, discarded plates, embers and ashes, the last memories like a warm after-glow.

You dreamt of Maragall, or at least his book. Not to be found. Instead, you ask for a mirror, in 'the Catalan style'. Not for you, she said. You do not understand the world it comes from. Cannot see. For you it is a beautiful useless thing.

So, you write dark words to yourself in the dark of night. Your words your own kind of mirror. Wondering all the time what they'll look like in the morning light. It is good to write like this, without seeing oneself.

You wake because of the rattling of the door, the indecipherable stuttering cries of the birds. Some doors should be kept open. Held. You scribbled down something. And then it ended. How beautiful was the sleek blank page. How cold the shining , shimmering white page!

You hear yourself breathe again, the pulse of blood stirring; the hand quickening the heart.

The crow's voice: stifled, muffled, as if he was unsure of himself. Rhythmic measured utterances, dripping like a viscuous fluid out of the spell of the night. Crow, restless crow, has found peace again in his black heart.You realise morning has arrived when you see the curve of her back and smile.

Do flowers dream at night? The dreams of flowers at night are like the silence of things. They float effortlessly in the meadow but are not real.

Whatever I read, whatever I see radiates inwardly into a dream, like the petals of a sunflower or the hands of the sun. Tomorrow, I will keep a picture with me and gaze, and gaze at the beloved.