She

she is the saddest of her soul, she is not sad like tears or scowl or stone, she is the saddest only very little & only largest, only moment, very slightly, over only all the surface & throughout perimeter. Her body conjures up some tears, it’s funny because she’s sad & her body conjures up some tears.  But this is not like billiard balls, her sadness does not cause her tears, her tears are not what made her sad, her sadness is not sad, her tears are tears but are not sad, a shiver takes her body once, so that a tiny tidal wave, & then it’s gone before it’s gone, her head rests back against her seat, her train protests against a curve, a dog shakes, water from its fur, but only once, as if then frozen into time. Her tears are out of open eyes as round as coloured Persian plates, her tears are very wet but hardly trickle down her face, one from one eye, one from one eye, & her others into inside her open eyes, she grips her seat into her fingers, she breathes her breath slow & forceful into the air into her mouth & windpipe, lungs & body blood. She falls apart 1000 times, she feels a fullness of herself pressing against herself, so that she spills over into herself, her air, her tram seat there, the colours of her cosmos, she grips her sides of seat, she figures she is ebb & flow, &/or a piece of Onyx coloured Plexiglas,

Adolf Hoffmeister, Illus. for a 1967 Czech edition of Lautreamont Poesies

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