Empire of Dreams

by Braschi,Giannina

  The day told me that the wind had returned to my house. And had to leave because a man who wanted to build a new day came looking for it. But when the wind came back to see me, it dressed up as a new day so no one would come back to find it. And the wind took off again when the phone rang. The wind didn’t know how to tell the day that things were no longer in their place. And the day told me that when the wind returned to my house the ladder no longer had rungs. And I was waiting for someone to tell me why there were no stairs. But the wind disguised itself as a doorman and told me he didn’t know the house was mine. So, I told the day, things are no longer in their place. And the day told me the house was mine, like the world.

  The wind and I would have to take off and fly. Behind the closets and under the furniture no one says my name. Yes, I know I’m in a world of invisible sounds. I know its origin. I go toward it and hide. The wind and I would have to take off and fly. My hand says it no longer feels the air.

  And among countless roads and old shoes, among countless objects and questions, the hand acts as an interpreter and the air keeps blowing and the door keeps unlocking and the wind goes back to its place as the door closes. Yes, everything has its place and everything counts when objects empty at the door. But I feel there is something weightless that runs. It’s something that rises and never reveals itself and has to hide in some other corner. And that something now raises the same questions. And the wind finds itself back at a point—right where silences fly and objects jump back into the painting. By then you can’t tell one object from another—it’s as if they weren’t the same objects: watch, mirror, image, wind. But my hand knows the fall, and there’s no other question than the same objects striking the frame and the chair. And the air stays still and everything is in its place.

  Sure, it’s true. Questions don’t change the truth. But they give it motion. They focus my truth from another angle. And you said: we’re cleaning up the truth. We must clarify certain things.

  You don’t tell the truth and your jacket eventually comes back made of another material, and your shoes say sure! and run back to you telling my truth. Even if it’s raining now, your truth may be that it’s not raining inside like it’s raining outside. Though silent you may be saying what I’m thinking when you weren’t talking. Don’t pay attention to me and keep saying come when you said go. Then don’t expect me to listen when you say come. You’ll come with your words get out and the door will open. I hear those words and the door opens halfway. Then you’ll come and I’ll know how to say: get out.

  I always knew that a bit farther or closer but never in the exact spot a heart beats at the bottom of a painting and we are the breaking glass. I don’t reach as far inside as I told you and I see you reflected in a sliding mirror and you open your eyes forgetting that you look at me and I am forgetfulness. But there was a time when to the left of the heart and at the end of the road to the heart and in the river and the street of the heart and within the walls of the heart you slipped and railed and spilled and always came back different through the heart, moving the heart and plunging into that heart. And you went so deep inside me that I asked you to take me in the dark and in the light—and inside that heart and your pulse and your nerve. Now there is no need to break the heart’s glass because it was submerged, full.

  You tell me to say things as they are and I say them as they were and you say I changed them and I say I’m not changing them because that’s the way they are. It all depends on how they get up. But it’s not that—things get up when I make them. I insist, I’m not planning anything. They get up without a clock, and like sound they fall. And that’s the way they are because that’s the way they were born. They are happy when I get angry. They sit down when you get up. They fall asleep when I’m awake. But don’t wake them when I’m up or call them when I’m asleep. And understand me. It’s not a command. Understand them, not me who commands you. It’s the mandate of things. I’m not forcing you to obey them. They are in charge. And the table’s place takes the chair’s place, and the chair has a body’s place. And goodbye because you get everywhere with distance. Not because my goodbye, which doesn’t obey you either, is against goodbyes. And yes, because I took my goodbye from you and I’m hoping you’ll hold it against your own goodbye. Goodbye and goodbye.

  I arrive at your house transformed into art, framed behind my memories. The lintel’s color is the guardian of my dream, you the painting. The frame of your house crosses the bottom of the painting. I cross the horizon and sit down to look at it. I arrive home transformed into art, framed behind your memories.

  I learn more in those seven days than I already know. And if that day draws near, I wish to know Mondays and Thursdays. When that Thursday fades away, I ask for Saturday. The slowness of that Saturday makes me wish for Monday. And this Monday I find that Friday begins by thinking about you, and this Friday I learn that I draw away from you again on Monday, and every Monday with you brings the same hours as Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. And I’ll never return to that Sunday that drew me so near to your distance.

  There’s no such thing as more or less. Hours are in excess. I’m constantly walking and counting as I go: one, two. Three hours have passed. If I multiply them, days run too. Then I make a circle and break it. The sea breaks, and those four and these two broke. You couldn’t, we couldn’t. The hand will close that circle when you come. What hand? Don’t look at me. I’d like to tear the number from the waves. Look at me. I have five fingers, and the waves are five. What does this five know of that seven or ten! Don’t you know if I open my fingers I count fifty and say, five, five? My fingers can’t open, they close. They run through the waves and always return to the sea. And they come, they come back without knowing their secret. They take what they bring. They bring the sea and take the embrace. Count the fingers on my hands. Ten fingers add up to twenty embraces. And day falls and so does that embrace. Don’t open love if the embrace is closed. Open the wind and close your hand. Keep away from my kingdom. The wind wanted to say the opposite. But the air took off with that hand.

  What’s the use of memory, says the alarm. You have to love. You have to love when the heart is alarmed. And that alarm is the keeper of fire. And water can’t quench the fire loved with alarm. So who cares if the firemen arrive. Water turns into more flames. And then the bell rings. You won’t come, I said to myself, you didn’t show up with the bell. And suddenly that alarm is on fire. And you come in, slowly, and not even the bell knows the surprise.

  Ask. I don’t ask for much. I only ask you for two numbers, two people, two accounts, two ways, two mirrors, two words, two gazes, two digits that always add up to four on a mirror, that always add up to eight and answer us, count. There’s only two of us, you and I together. Ask. I don’t ask for much. But for what little I ask the mirror repeats only two are left: you and me.

  It’s impossible to be everywhere. You always said that. The impossible is possible in our framework. But you break the frame of another impossible: me. And I break the frame of another pronoun: you. And even if that frame be made of you and me—an impossible, a lip, some gates, a bar. Within the possible there is no impossible that won’t pierce the me and the you: the frame. And you and I have reached the bottom.

  I was wrong, it’s true, I made a mistake. But it’s great to be wrong. Excuse me, lady, I don’t mean to bother you, but I like to watch you walk. Excuse me, sir, I didn’t mean to interrupt, but I’d like to say: goodnight. Now I can breathe. And I’d like you to tell me why I can’t walk if I’m here, or why I couldn’t talk if I were over there. But I like being called when I’m absent and always answer: here I am. And we like to remember the road I did not tread. That means: I like to walk when I stay right here. And when we go for a walk I’ll say to myself, the day is different when it stays home. But I don’t like the one who keeps saying: come back when you say I back off. I didn’t love the one who told me: back off, but then you told me to come closer.

  I know a night th
at always came close, and it came so close that it opened my doors. On entering I saw that it carried memories in the deepest part. Quiet on the threshold, the noise of another distant night sounded. That one could slip in because it was hot and the door was open. Even the wind snuck through the legs of that nearby night.

  For a while that night and I were walking along deserted streets with no stores. Night grew weary because it knew that I never reached the end of the street. Sometimes it would look at me as if it remembered the way of another distant night. Once more the wind snuck through my legs. We got lost in the city of the wind. But another nearby night was opening in the middle of a crowd.

  For now, a pair of dark glasses warns me that night has no windshield. Happiness is solitary. I know an elephant is listening to me and a raven is repeating my words from an oblique angle. Meanwhile, I divest myself of all my whims. The elephant is afraid. The raven said so when we returned from another dream.

  Then a hat said that it can’t resist the wind because it’s awake. A window opened its pane at the end of the day, and a drop of dew insisted that spring was on its way. But spring replays the same song. Not a cherry stirs behind it. Nostalgia is a fruit with the pain of distance in its pit.

  There’s something so dark about night. I shut my eyes tight and dream in clarity when I look at it. Night is not that dark. It’s not the blackness. It’s something as obscure as fire. And it lifts me. When they open their eyes, night and fire know one another. But they’re not the same. And now I get up and look at you. There’s no darkness and no fire. And silence must be dark. And day will bring different fires.

  Hold the arrow’s circle, you used to say to me, like a hand that only has five fingers. I got it, I answered. The arrow crossing the horizon is drinking the dream of the gods. Don’t confuse the terms, you used to say to me. The hand that only has five fingers robbed me of the enigma.

  I already told you I’m not rushing, I’m waiting. I know I’m not rushing because I’m not thinking about night when I’m walking. I’m walking as if the day were eternal. That’s how it is. If it weren’t so there would be less roads. But you can’t tell what is less when you’re waiting for a night that never comes. There you have it, you say, just what you were expecting. No, that’s not it, I say. I say what I was thinking when I was walking. Now I can’t go back. Getting there is not the same as having waited. It’s not the same as night, but it has the same slow pace as exhaustion. The door loses its support. It lost the way of hope just like me. I told you I can’t return when the road has four letters: STOP.

  From two slow roads, two fast stops, I take the wind. The body belongs to me, I take the day. I’ll never stop, the road will stop, we’ll take a quick look from two slow roads. When I plunge into thought, I walk at the foot of the wind. If I have penetrated something, it’s only to be alone with all I see. To avoid looking at it, I think of another foot. I don’t want to see day, or night, or that hat. To avoid resting, I run. Like the plane that flies and the car that stops now. A door closes and night rises. Streets are crowding solitude.

  Nonetheless, solitude doesn’t span our hands or move like waves. Each wave brings a different rhythm, each morning is new. The breeze doesn’t move like a window, doesn’t think body, and doesn’t feel alone. But my solitude would like to say day and says far away and says now and thinks tomorrow inside. It knows there will no dialogue tomorrow because there will be no memory and its windows will be shut. But if I said fire, there would be no other truth than water and a forest would continue correcting the words. My water wouldn’t know how to repeat what fire said. My hand, then, would span a dialogue, yours throws back the question, and the monologue hides its word. And, nonetheless, my silence raises the question and the man doesn’t answer. A sign questions me and the word opens. There is no shore.

  I’d have to wear a different heart, a new joy, a new outcome. Mystery could be assaulted without breaking its tide, I mean, without feeling anything. The stone would petrify, and even sad shyness would become daring, if it knew that a memory was watching it. Ignore this eye and that door. I don’t want you to feel it or see me. The movement of the tide is different when you look at it. The eye of the window loses its transparency if the wind shuts it. Solitude has no enigma when it stays alone. But when your heart is a party, solitude becomes crowded with memories. Ignore this eye and that door. I don’t want you to feel it or see me.

  When I look at the road I always find the window, and then I stop looking at it so that it will join me. And I forget. Then I suspect that nothing is there. Later I discover the floor. And they stick together. Later on they meet the eye of the sea. To join horizons, it’s enough to recognize them. Face to face without the interference of distance. So you won’t know what you saw and remember something else. The road must always divide its ups and downs. They are always two—someone has told me that water closes the circle of three. For me at least, it’s always two. Afterward, the world disappears.

  I was coming back through the outcome when I found the entrance. I didn’t want to go back to the same street, so I went another way. Maybe I felt the curve is shorter when it doesn’t tell the entrance that it will come with the outcome. I don’t know, I asked the street for the unlisted address. It didn’t feel abandoned. I knew it when it folded its hand. But soon it put its finger on the return and insisted that the very first was the long way that mentioned the beginning without realizing it. What’s the use of being in the fifth dimension? I told the first of all not to mention it to the last. I promised to keep distant. I would have remembered the promise of that address. I would have sent it another way. I would have made it promise me another beginning. The prompt answer was slowing down. What’s the use of knowing the first or ignoring the next-to-last, if the next-to-last didn’t remember that the outcome would take place later? If it were any less sincere, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter and it’s not going to matter, the others told me. You still don’t know the way? I can only send you to another one. But I don’t know, I really don’t know. Ask the sidewalks, that’s what they’re for, let them go with you. The car would probably fight it. But, at least, the sidewalk put up a fence and divided the paths.

  Now that the paths diverge, I’d like to measure the distance. It’s not the distance of the foot when it meets the hand, nor the silence of the head or the death of the heart. How many friends are there? How many can count on the measure of silence? If they encounter death in the middle of the night, they greet her. That’s all. And enough. Repeat it. They greet her. I count them among the others, brothers. Don’t leave me here. I don’t want to meet the dividing line because I divided the paths and the hand went with the leg. Where is it? they asked. Where did it go? It hasn’t left. It’s sitting with the foot. And now the leg is nonexistent. The noise of the hand is nonexistent. How do you think it can walk without the hand? Here is reality. The hand touches distance. Touches it, nothing more. That’s all. And enough.

  II. Profane Comedy

  Dedication and Warning

  This book is dedicated to the entire cast of Profane Comedy. To the actors who play the roles of drunkards and buffoons. It is also dedicated to all the people I do not mention but who helped me with the setting of the stage and the costumes of the actors. I must thank all of you for having listened to my poems. This book was written to be sung and to be read in public and to be heard by large audiences. And to be proclaimed at festivals and gala concerts. With elegant dresses. And makeup. And actors. And extras. And comedies. It was written for carnivals and orgies. It was written for well-being and joy. And it was written for the company. It was written for the world and for life and for crowds and masses. It was written for elitists and thinkers and philosophers. It is the book of exclamations and interjections. And it is the book of Bacchus and Faustus. And of the poet-child. And of the poet-actor. And of the poet-philosopher. All these poets and the poems never written by philosophers are in the pages of this book. And children’s stories are here.
And the prima donna is here. And the singer. And here is Giannina, dressed like a clown, giving the right cues to all the actors of Profane Comedy. They are all nervous and will soon begin to sing their complaints and their laments. Soon the alarm will sound. Soon Profane Comedy will begin. Soon fortune-tellers and buffoons will speak. Soon Pastoral will arrive. And soon Profane Comedy will end.

  1. Book of Clowns and Buffoons

  …et la Reine, la Sorcière qui allume sa braise dans le pot de terre, ne voudra jamais nous raconter ce que’elle sait, et que nous ignorons.