Like the spider in its web,
he weaves in circles, with invisible threads,
without a sound,
his glass existence.
He is the world’s transparency.
He makes his rounds
but always returns to the high bridges where
we cannot see him.
Here is a pillar, an arch,
four windows overlooking the sea.
There are no avenues of plane trees in the godless
City.
In December,
the first circus arrives and raises its
tent
in the outskirts.
He knows the orphan child may not come in.
The child brings in the only dog
found abandoned in the harbour.
He has never heard a single word from the lips
of fairies who inhabit books.
He is also a child who walks about
to come back to the cruel evidence of the
wastelands.
Like the spider,
I want to imprison him in a web where
work is slow,
an untenable art, gentle.
I want to hold him in my arms.
I’d like an altar of gardenias for his
insomnia.