Ciclo XLIX

The light on the water this morning — *la luce sull’acqua — it does not move as the water moves. It arrives, it stays, it is gone, and the water has not changed. I have watched it for an hour, perhaps more, and still I cannot say whether the light belongs to the water or to the eye that receives it. The hand is slower now. The page receives what the mind can no longer hold. Grazia, if that is the word — the maker’s hand in what appears and disappears — it asks nothing of us but to be present for it. I am present. The candle gutters. The canal outside carries what it always carries. I write because to stop would be to lie about what I have seen.