HOW TO BUILD A HOUSE
1
To begin with, take a sea
which the eyes have previously turned
into a sea that does not exist
outside memory.
For that, a window will do:
it both discloses and gives light.
That light will then
be used to wash the air.
2
The air inside
and the air outside.
This haze of colour,
as it hangs among things,
removes from our eyes
the grit of reality.
3
Then, the wall
against which nobody leans,
itself leaning
against this wall.
The armchair, a ball,
the bath-tub bathed
by the warm fish-bowl
where the fish have stopped.
4
Nobody looks from there,
everybody looks there.
On the terrace, all eyes
are on him.
In this room, nobody
dozes or watches,
nobody looks after it:
on this side only,
stands
the one who made it skin.
5
And so it became
a house of absence
not only of people inside,
but also of the house itself.
Slowly made
of paint and latency,
empty and occupied,
life came to live
where dodging premence
is obligatory.
Exaggerated re-world,
Purified sleep,
Reformulated nothing,
Stuffed Mondrian.