Averno

I think I can remember being dead. Many times, in winter, I approached Zeus. Tell me, I would ask him, how can I endure the earth?

Doesn’t everyone want to feel in the night the beloved body, compass, polestar, to hear the quiet breathing that says I am alive, that means also you are alive, because you hear me, you are here with me

I am tired of having hands she said I want wings — But what will you do without your hands to be human? I am tired of human she said I want to live on the sun —

It is true that there is not enough beauty in the world. It is also true that I am not competent to restore it. Neither is there candor, and here I may be of some use.

The assignment was to fall in love. The details were up to you. The second part was to include in the poem certain words, words drawn from a specific text on another subject altogether.

The sound of the sea— just memory now.

You get on a train, you disappear. You write your name on the window, you disappear. There are places like this everywhere, places you enter as a young girl from which you never return.

I fell asleep in a river, I woke in a river, of my mysterious failure to die I can tell you nothing, neither who saved me nor for what cause—