I opened the Russian-Chinese dictionary:
there between two pages was a tiny insect.
It spread its wings and flew away.
I lost sight of it, maybe
it’s still struggling on the window pane
or has died there like so many insects or succeeded
in getting out into the open. Like some of us.
For a while I wondered if it couldn’t have been
a word, a sign from the dictionary
which had had enough and wanted to become
something else, something more than a sign,
a hieroglyph under the cold glass covers
of this world, of this life.
*