SCENT OF BREAD

I entered the town and it didn’t smell like sea and it didn’t smell like oranges and I couldn’t recognize camellias because there was neither white flash nor the white perfume –

it was night and people were passing by, carrying brown paper-bags, new bread for the new night, the midnight that already opens its palm full of past moments –

their evening rite, I said, those comings and goings on narrow streets, stone floors of their home, I also should follow the scent to the doors opening toward the yellow nourishing light –

but the wind! there was too much wind in narrow streets up there almost under the moon almost on the city walls that protected us from the salty from the blue from the bitter –

the wind took scent away, I was left with the flights of stone stairs, a passage filled with smoke from the pipe of a motionless man in pyjamas, voices of dead leaves gathering at the doors of empty taverns, lithe seashore cats –

on every landing: look! there are people dancing up there! black and white as the night – but those are not people, just shirts black and white dancing with the wind –

I’m trying to find the arcaded courtyard where I once left my green ring while dancing – such rings just grew on my fingers, I never noticed where I left them – now they’re not growing, my fingers are naked, I’m only awaiting the grey weaving and spinning –

I’m trying to find the loom made of green stone, the loom at the fountain by the old town gate – I’d stand there and say: all right, it is hard, but look, just look at my fabric –

no! I’m only looking for bread and the treacherous scent leads me wrong way, while letters appear on street lanterns, small letters legible only from short distance – every lantern one event, every lantern one green ring from my finger – when I come close enough: wine cellar, laundry service, souvenirs –

but lanterns are already dwindling, words on glass fading, rutted street leading me in some dark scaffoldings, a land of scarred stone, I feel I’m walking a plank above darkness –

but then comes a moon-coloured sound, three-beat, two-beat, clear and flickering, bringing me back to the lost scent of bread

(poem from the book In the Free Quarter, translated by the author)