The rain was still falling but the hen went on pecking at her concerns along the edge of the road. A white bird, ashen really, vigorous and wet. I’m not sure than I’m not one of those people who expect other people to do their chores for them, looking at the rain and the wet road, it was hard to be sure. The writing table then, a right old antique, had fleurs-de-lys in yellow wood inlaid into the slightly darker phillipine mahogany. Colors!

Letters don’t write themselves, I mean, and the woman is waiting down in that ridiculous city for some word from me—not a reply, how can one “reply” to affection, tenderness. Something has to be said. I’m sure you’ve noticed how the heating coil on a hotplate or electric range turns always to the right, as if a left-trophic turn would suck the natural heat out of meat or root and leave it instead a frigid corpse-white on a pan too old to touch. I mean too cold—but you know that: see, I almost left it for you to discover, be my corrector.

Remember, there is some tropical fruit or gourd which, hollowed out and dried, can be pierced here and there with holes and become an ocarina, that ‘little goose’ fluty thing ovally round and nestles in the palm of the hand, hooty-hoot the soft sound of it played. Now is the song inherent in the gourd, and all our native crafts exist to let it out? Ask this about everything.

By now the chicken is out of sight, hidden in the bushes or maybe flown away. Can chickens still fly? If not, is it Darwin or the farmer’s knife responsible for their grounding? Look what happened to penguins, and nobody even eats them. Can chickens even swim?
It is at moments like this that one says to oneself, or I say, my God, the road is empty, empty. What can I tell the woman in Belem? A little song: If you care / why are you there? Dangerous. One thing I’ve learned: we are all where we should be. Going was our first mistake.

I hope the fox didn’t get the hen. Time for music. I turn on the radio on the table, internet, set for the Catholic station in Vienna plays classical music 24/7, tossing little maxims and bon-mots between the selections, but all in German so they don’t break in to the solemn worship music is, if you don’t mind my saying so. Listen if you like.
But I have to write something. Language demands hat of her children—hear a word, say a word. That’s the rule. Why is she even in Brazil? Crocodiles, and river dolphins that come up on land at midnight to court young women, so I’ve been told. Or is that another city? There are so many. So little empty spaces left for me and the chicken. And the fox. So maybe I’ll tell her that: Dear friend, there is an empty road between our houses, bending always to the right, it will bring us together as the world turns. There. That doesn’t make much sense but at least it’s written. Maybe the sense comes later, grows out of the worlds, like ordinary flowers when this winter is over.

13 January 2021