Ciclo IV

Amboise, the fifth day of May, in the year twenty-six — the hour past midnight, the candle reduced

The water in the basin does not know it is the same water that fell this morning as rain, and yet it is — la stessa acqua, the same soul redistributed, the same argument the sky makes with the earth, endlessly, without resolution, without either side admitting loss. I watched the drops strike the surface and each one opened a circle, and each circle opened another, and they crossed each other without damage, passed through each other as if matter were merely a rumor the light had agreed to believe for a while, and I thought: this is what happens when two ideas meet in a mind that is not afraid — they do not cancel, they propagate, they reach the edge and return, diminished only in amplitude, never in kind. My hand shook when I tried to draw it. The rings were already gone. Non importa — I had seen it, which is the first and perhaps the only necessary thing, and the page received what it could, which was less than the eye held, which was less than whatever it is that watches behind the eye and has not yet told me its name.