When he climbed upon the bed, sated, summertime;memories of his unusually long lifedidn’t render him shade —didn’t console him with that dream of a bicycle.Instead, from the crypt of his old sorrows appearedhis dead sistershanging upside down from the roof,wiggling their smokey limbs, whispering in the air,as if they couldn’t wait to anoint him.
Appropriate not to regret then,he thought:this, going from nowhere to nowherebut scampering from one emergency to another,mingling with blood, bone, and vagaries of light.Why worry about the seizure of selfas one dies: the I is an aloof propertyof the body at best.Till the old sisters vanish in the waft of the sky.
With this hope, he awoke never to seethis orphaned dream again.
Image: The Poor Poet (1839), Carl Spitzweg, Oil on canvas, 36.2 x 44.6 cm (14.2 x 17.5 in), Neue Pinakothek, Munich