And now I will read some fragments
from second part of book, from "This Door is Not an Exit."
"In one of those parking lots in McLean
I wait for her to finish shopping.
She comes across the lot clutching
a paper bag, the birds flying up to the trees in front of her.
Now she settles into the seat slowly,
putting the umbrella in her lap like treasure with no desire
to free herself of its burden.
I look at her in the way she moves, dwelling
on the first signs of fatigue.
And for a second I feel like that umbrella,
and all the rain in it bears the blame
for all the unfulfilled dream of youth.
In the garden of a restaurant, a reddish
colored cat stares at tiny creatures in the leaves.
Everything is so natural, that is, familiar.
We sit around the cast-iron table
right like a real family on an outing,
and I think of my father.
He was a miner in a coal mine.
And I think of my father's father
who was a miner in a salt mine.
I think of a black and white family photo
from a time that makes me feel something like sorrow
and not sorrow.
Something from the glint of whose eyes
only massive solar panels could make
migrate into the language of poetry.
Desolate February morning.
I stumble upon myself in the room.
The phone isn't ringing nor do I have
anything to tell the world.
I look at the painting on the wall.
My portrait done by a painter from Sarajevo
with a new address and a Canadian citizenship.
I went out into the world to rest the body alarm
and the fear of disappearing.
But courage left me at the first gloom.
Now, I'm in the middle or at the end,
it's all the same, of a life that
wasn't even indispensable."
Sorry.