The Door Walled Up with Lime
The Door Walled Up with Lime
The door was walled up with slaked lime and I lived behind it,
long live the lime kept fresh with water brought from dried-up wells —
I walked back and forth, back and forth, behind the blind wall,
I had turned white from one end to the other, like a chalk ghost,
and the milk I drank was white, but bitter as mine salt,
I made signs on the wall, I knocked, but the lime dust rushed into my mouth
and drowned me.
I made plans too, living behind the door as if inside a lung of stone,
and when I grew upset, it let out a tremendous creak, like a bone torn from a shoulder.
"Let's be silent together," it would whisper to me on nights of sick, full moon,
by it I learned the alphabet by touch, letter by blind letter,
the lime kept filling the white gap between two thoughts,
by it I would sit and listen to my heavy heart, like a millstone,
the dust covered it, I breathed with all my strength, in vain.
And behind me I felt them passing, endless,
carts loaded with coffins and with flowers long since withered,
I think it was an important road, maybe the only one left on the map,
I knocked on the wall, I wanted to ask whether it still rained outside, whether rain still existed,
nothing could be done, the lime rushed into my mouth, and drowned me.
It never occurred to anyone to pass through the wall with a bowed shoulder,
but even a spoonful was enough for me — I think I was dazed from so much white.
And the wall at the back was entirely occupied
by a golden girl, slender as a ray of light caught in an icon's frame,
whom I called Ileana Cosânzeana, my beloved from another world,
her cheek covered with a thin mask of melted wax, almost alive,
with thread at her wrists, other strings at her ankles, like a puppet on strings,
her bare arms reached out to me, pleading, and she told me:
I've been waiting for you my whole life, the warm strings sink deep into my flesh.
She was white too, but she seemed to have dark patches here and there, like stains of ink,
I think her heart was black as a night with no moon and no stars,
I knew I had to break the wall with my own body, to reach her at last,
to pass through the blind lime the way you pass through a wordless prayer —
and that is exactly what happened.
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