I do not know nor will I ever know what it
was that forced the issue of my exile. That I
wander still, after so many years, having
fixed my pleasures in the most transient
encounters, and where love once it has
bloomed all too quickly dies, is perhaps more
than I can account for beyond saying: "I too
was there, in that city, where I found, among
other lessons, the stark silhouette of my
vanity." Or: "Yes, I know that village quite
well, for on its flea-bitten walls I would
delight with Leonardo's old games of
'seeing'." Or, better yet: "I remember my
arrival, how exhausted I was, and the wild
company I found as poor and demented as I.
The wine was superb and the meat stringy
and tough." For beyond this there is little. I
came; I left. In between there were days,
weeks perhaps. Sudden friendships, quarrels,
guilt would eventually sputter out. Once I
even though of marriage but she, knowing
me all too well, laughed in my face. I do not
reproach her for the memory.

        I could tell you of my parents, too, and
of their expectations ground to dust by my
fickle youth. I could tell you of all the time I
have wasted while time stripped me clean,

and I woke one morning and gazed around
me and recognized nothing.

        Yet there is little now that I would
change, even if I could. I accept my lot,
which is something quite different from
making peace with the world! The spirit of
my anger would never allow me to collapse
so thoroughly that I would perpetually
mistake modern life for what I desire, doing
— all in all — even less to fulfill.

        Nor can I admit to any great obsession
as a way of explaining my erratic course,
save that I recognize it when I see it,
recalling each time these fateful words of
Baudelaire: "Each of them carried on his
back an enormous Chimera, as heavy as a
sack of corn ..."

        If there is anything then that saves me
the suffering others imagine I endure, and
which I have endured if only to spite myself
before them, it is this road, this sky, on
which and under which I am no less and no
more than I am: wanderer, nomad, wearing
the violent bric-a-brac of defiled seasons.

   There is nothing now, a few stars dying into
day, a premonition of light, a bird shaking
itself awake, the last bats fattened on nectar.

        In this transparent hour I give myself to
all I am not, never having known any better.