He's a great reader, the poet grants. He likes to read. He likes the lightness of reading. What does he add to the book by his reading? Nothing – nothing at all. He doesn't disturb the book. He leaves it alone. It goes his way, and he his.
It's just that his way passes along the surface of the book. That he passes lightly across it, as across a sleeping dragon in a fairy tale. The book turns in its sleep. He's frightened.
But in truth, he could never wake up the book. The book is not dead – it's still alive, but in a way that is indifferent to him, remote from him. It's alive as a quasar is alive, buried in space. It's alive as a creature made of stars might be: unfathomable, vast.
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He reads, of course he reads. Still, he's not sure he reads, for all that. What does he take in? What does he really understand of his Penguin Modern European Poets, of Ekelof or Holub? What can he make, really make, of Quasimodo or Pavese? Ungaretti, he grants, he does understand. He feels some connection with Ungaretti. But the others?
His editions haven't even got facing translations, he says. He can't even mouth the foreign words to himself to which the translation corresponds. He can't even mouth them and fantasise he knows them, that he could speak unknown European tongues.
Ungaretti, now. Ungaretti is different. His poems are very short, for one thing. A couple of lines. A single phrase. Very short, very simple. He likes his poems short, and surrounded by commentary, the poet says. In truth, he prefers literary critical books that quote poetry rather than real, actual poetry on the page.
The space around the poem makes him shudder. It's always too white, too vast. He fears he will go snow-blind, space-blind. How could he dare to leave tracks there? How to disturb the snowy peace? Even Ungaretti makes him shudder, he says. He hardly even opens his Ungaretti now, he says.
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