GEOMETRY

Because life commences with the phrase
--Walk straight ahead...
with our freedom to dream
which has never been lacking
we find a point somewhere
and draw a line.

We entrust dreams to this
but they
commanded by the virtues of the race
to be impetuous
flee far...
remain decisively at a dead point
unlikely to be touched by us...
and so the Dreams are gone...
we’ll not see them again.

Being people without weight (without dreams) as we are
the wind carries us round the others
whose history is also conducted
under the nightmarish concept of Geometry
and under the Sign of a general global catastrophe
we draw a circle.

But only a friend knows why
whole mountains wrapped in eternal ice
enter this curved life
deep ravines
and a host of other impediments
and thus we return to where we began.

So as you can see
we failed at these two simplest shapes
of the geometric life...

Think now of our further existence
under the domination, let’s say, of the Cube!

Who will detach this boundless sky
so we may once and for all dethrone Paradise?

But who will carry Hell round on their Backs
in order to place it on top like a lid
with the intent of punishment and the eternal conclusion
to this Topsy -turfy farce?

Our life passed without us ever learning
how to adapt to this deadly geometry
where now as night has fallen
on our dreams
we confirm that this is the most correct explanation
for the fatalism of Human life on Earth
which evolved within these narrow
planetary dimensions.

And now with a strange kind of self-restraint
we have strewn over an open field
the passions, the visions...
and whatever is seething inside us
awaiting from any and all directions
the writers who will compose the biographies for us
and who with their well-known genius
will chastise everything...
it is expected we will be shut up in a square
to keep History under the strictest
control.

Translation by
PHILIP RAMP