We come from selling our lies

we slide down a winter landscape à la Brueghel

        like hunters returning with their catch

carrying our bandy sticks

                 towards a glorious career and steady income

        and what should we throw on the slippery speech,

salt or sand,

        as a pair of sneakers hangs from the wire

                 as the blue-cross flag rages in the wind

                            like the retired number of the state.

What from this afterimage silk-pressed in ice

            returns to mind, does anything ever

                   when all that is solid turns into air