I don’t feel at home in this synthetic world
where the good old varnish smell is replaced
by the whiff of acrylic and glyphtal paints
I find it hard, sometimes impossible, to get accustomed to;
where shelves and tables are made of sawdust
and you can play the Ode to Joy on a plastic flute
or listen to it in a recording
by some long-dead conductor. Your environment
consists of dead things, people and voices. Life withdraws
in front of us, until there’s only wilderness to retreat to.
Or it survives in hideouts beside us:
in flower-pot, aquarium, wall crack, dustbin.
A student awake late at night
puts the book aside and kills some bedbugs
which, as always, leave their holes at a certain hour
and creep into the bed.
*