Episode In A Library

A blonde girl is bent over a poem.

With a pencil sharp as a lancet she transfers the words to a blank page and changes them into strokes, accents, caesuras.

The lament of a fallen poet now looks like a salamander eaten away by ants.       When we carried him away under machine-gun fire,

I believed that his still warm body would be resurrected in the word.

Now as I watch the death of the words,

I know there is no limit to decay.

All that will be left after us in the black earth will be scattered syllables.

Accents over nothingness and dust.