The Secret of Numbers

(Poetry 1998)

382
A drink of water to declare bankruptcy. No
money, life itself was to blame. No one to
help. “I’m studying languages, not
mathematics,” he said. Number eighty-two
in the sixth row. She worships her own
statue: a Sunday child, who can see what
others can’t. She thought she held a child,
but there was nothing. His daughter, a girl
who loved just ordinary water, it’s color and
fragrance. Counting funeral wreaths,
counting poor people. I was a Sunday child,
and he made me his slave. Remember when
she dropped her bracelet, pulling out bricks
one by one?

181
Close with the police and, even though there
was no Sunday child at the ghost supper,
she can’t stand the sight of her own
daughter. Is the young girl sick? He’s like
the devil himself and can go through locked
doors. He can stay in the closet, which is
what wives say when they want to murder
their husbands. Your husband provoked
payment with his signet ring. All languages
are codes, but she could sense the light.
Times up! You’re a thief who steals
souls, like a vampire. She had witnessed a
crime go into that closet.

23
Adèle! Possess the virtues I lack. What’s
the point of talking vampires? Everything
she touches shrivels and dries. To lock a
window, because my hand had grown so
thin. I saw in lettering like scorpions that he
had been love with the dead man’s son. My
father ended up in a madhouse, with water
that’s stagnant. The harp was silent. Deaf
and dumb.

195.

A montage of quotes from
August Strindberg's play
The Ghost Sonata

Strindberg, Five Plays
Translated by Harry G. Carlson
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