1.

Once I could imagine my soul

I could imagine my death.

When I imagined my death

my soul died. This

I remember clearly.

My body persisted.

Not thrived, but persisted.

Why I do not know.

2.

When I was still very young

my parents moved to a small valley

surrounded by mountains

in what was called the lake country.

From our kitchen garden

you could see the mountains,

snow covered, even in summer.

I remember peace of a kind

I never knew again.

Somewhat later, I took it upon myself

to become an artist,

to give voice to these impressions.

3.

The rest I have told you already.

A few years of fluency, and then

the long silence, like the silence in the valley

before the mountains send back

your own voice changed to the voice of nature.

This silence is my companion now.

I ask: of what did my soul die?

and the silence answers

if your soul died, whose life

are you living and

when did you become that person?

[From Averno]