Blue Eyes

The poet's flat. The poet's rooms. He has three rooms, he says, and that's enough. His kitchen/dining room. His bedroom, and his bathroom, which is surprisingly large, he says.

He shouldn't have left me into his flat, not really, he says. What am I doing here, drinking his tea? But here I am, in his flat, his writing pit. His former writing pit, the poet says.

I ask him about the bevelled window that divides the kitchen/dining room and the bedroom. It's an unusual feature. It's to let light through, the poet says, putting his hand to the glass. There's not enough light, not here in the flat. That's how he likes it, the poet says. The daylight oppresses him. It makes him feel agoraphobic. Agoraphobic and claustrophobic, he says.

When there's too much light, it's maddening, he says. Light everywhere, he says. Light pressing down. But here, in the flat, reading in his armchair in the bedroom, the light is blurred and diffused enough to become unthreatening. It asks for nothing and demands nothing. He feels very close to the indefinite. 

*

How can he explain the indefinite to the Dane?, the poet wonders. How can he make it tangible, felt? No doubt, my life is full of excitement, he says. Full of events! I go on holidays, no doubt. I probably go sailing. I look like a sailor. I have the far-seeing eyes of a sailor. Do I play golf? No, probably not golf. Even I am not shameless enough for golf. But I am used to the sea, he can see that. To the froth of the waves. To the salty air. He hates the sea, he says. He hates the salty air.

Blue eyes have no depth, he says. They can see as far as infinity, he says. What haven't I seen, with my Danish eyes?

'Look through the bevelled glass', the poet says, 'what do you see?' Nothing very much, I tell him. - 'The other room is blurred, its objects are without contour', the poet says. 'Now you have to imagine that in terms of time, the poet says.

'Imagine blurred events, moments undivided from one another. Imagine events that never quite transpire. Imagine life without contour, where nothing completes itself, and nothing really begins. Imagine that there's no end to things, and no beginning to them either'.

No matter, the poet says. He can see it's beyond me.