You will come to my house
But it’s not my house
I don’t know whose it is
I entered it one day by chance
There was no one there
There were only some red peppers hanging on a white wall
I lived long in this house
No one ever came
Day by day
I waited for you
I did nothing
Nothing serious, I mean
Sometimes in the morning
I let out wild animal screams
Brayed like a madman
With all the strength I had
And that truly pleased me
Then I played with my feet
Feet are very intelligent
They take you very far
When you want to go far
And when you don’t want to go
They stay there and keep you company
And when there’s music they dance
No dance without them
You’d have to be a fool—as man often is—
To say such foolish things
A fool who reasons with his feet, alive like a snowbird
But the snowbird isn’t lively at all
It’s alive only as long as it’s alive
It’s sad when it’s sad, or neither alive nor sad
What do we know of a snowbird
But it isn’t even called that
Man himself has named it so
Snowbird, snowbird, snowbird
How strange names are
Martin Hugo Victor the name
Bonaparte Napoleon his name
Why this way and not that
A flock of Bonapartes crosses the desert
The emperor is called Camel
He has a straw horse and some tapes for running
Galloping far away is someone who has only three names
Tim Tam Tom and no surname at all
A bit farther on is I don’t know who
Much farther on is I don’t know what
But what does any of it matter
To my house you will come
I think of something else and think only of this
And when you have entered my house
You will take off your clothes
And with your red mouth and naked you will remain
Like the red peppers on the white wall
And then you’ll go to bed and I’ll lie down beside you
Just like that
In my house that is not my house you will come.
