Again, Again

'For a long time, I was ill, you know that by now', the poet says. 'For a long time, ill, ill and unemployed, and I fell from of the world. I was silent, by and large. Do you know what it means to be silent, to say nothing?

'I said nothing. I watched the TV with the volume turned down. Nothing happened around me. The TV. Quiet voices. The voices of the people who delivered my meals talking to one another.

'The cleaner's voice. – "Are you in?" Of course I was in. I was always in. But I kept quiet. I kept silence to myself. Besides, I'd forgotten what it meant to speak. To coincide with myself in speaking.

'I wasn't sure words belonged to me. That I was entitled to them, words, as others were. The word, I, for example: how was I to say that? It felt quoted, on my lips. Quoted – as though I was borrowing it from someone else.

'Once, it was possible for me to say the word, I. But now? There was nothing to say. No word belonged to me. What could I report of the world? I could barely distinguish foreground and background, the important from the non-important.

'Nothing emerged to be said. Nothing needed to be spoken. Was I hungry? No. Did I thirst? No again. Was I warm? I was warm. Did I have a shelter over my head? I had shelter. What more did I want?

'The same, I lived in the same. One day seemed to sink into another. One week – into another. The same event – going to the kitchen for a glass of water, a trip to the bathroom – seemed to take place in series.

'I had been here before. I would be here again. What's the opposite of deja vu? The future would be the same as my present, my past. The future: the return of the same. Again, again'.