The Ghost of a Hunter

He reads: What soul suffers in secret, the flesh shows openly. Deep within, in a region hardly accessible, a bold self-image sends messages of bloodshed and conquest, which reverberate in his heart of hearts. [I forget which hand is writing.] He does not doubt that he exists. The five senses have left their mark on him. It is a record of what has happened to him, but he cannot talk or travel until he finds a body of water. A man who has lived on reindeer’s flesh amuses himself with ripples. In this cage was once a nightingale. In the echo, new words for wind. The usual convulsions, and a green cat. And, after all, months or years are nothing to him. [My image contains his body.] His body contains bodies. Blemishes. Inglories. Vague figures, in a howling wind, and with no notion of perspective. Of countless ruined worlds, he would appropriate the essential emblem. Wall struggling with wall, shadow with shad- ow. Thousands of miles a day. He gazes across an unguarded cemetery—gazes idly, waiting for new equipment. As through a fixed window, he finds a kind of space, the visible world foreshortened. He does not see deeply, but—still—one thing behind another. He keeps a tiny bird, folded like a sheet of paper. Twice two is four—still—and a circle has no angles. Body sheds shoulder, jaw. However body may appear, the soulcomes back in scars. [There are no dead. Only names.] Too close, ruin wrinkles the surface—his breath bothers reality. The sun pours down. The pots are mended. An unfolding, from where it is all contained. The ships have been salvaged. [I do not know what body he has in mind.] Clothing is resumed. Temples are rebuilt. “Which body?” we inquire, while all the liars cry out, “Verily!” As though all this were in the dark. Here is a column of soldiers, a heap of apples, an avenue of trees. Here a swarm of bees, of birds, a row of equidistant lines. A set of unequal objects distributes the field of vision. Here is the painted world in an actual image. [I have no theory for the clouds he sees.]