At a Lecture

Since mistakes are inevitable, I can easily be taken

for a man standing before you in this room filled

with yourselves. Yet in about an hour

this will be corrected, at your and at my expense,

and the place will be reclaimed by elemental particles

free from the rigidity of a particular human shape

or type of assembly. Some particles are still free. It's not all dust.

So my unwillingness to admit it's I

facing you now, or the other way around,

has less to do with my modesty or solipsism

than with my respect for the premises' instant future,

for those afore-mentioned free-floating particles

settling upon the shining surface

of my brain. Inaccessible to a wet cloth eager to wipe them off.

The most interesting thing about emptiness

is that it is preceded by fullness.

The first to understand this were, I believe, the Greek

gods, whose forte indeed was absence.

Regard, then, yourselves as rehearsing perhaps for the divine encore,

with me playing obviously to the gallery.

We all act out of vanity. But I am in a hurry.

Once you know the future, you can make it come

earlier. The way it's done by statues or by one's furniture.

Self-effacement is not a virtue

but a necessity, recognised most often

toward evening. Though numerically it is easier

not to be me than not to be you. As the swan confessed

to the lake: I don't like myself. But you are welcome to my reflection.