Pierre Alferi, p.11
Sixth room. You are not free until you have abandoned
a fixed building and given your fixtures
a chance to be tested. Where then? By
saying everywhere I invite you that you’re not at home,
you raise a question whose answer you avoid. My guest room,
seven square meters of attic, let in daylight through the roofs edge,
which opened onto a miniature tarred terrace.
Moving without moving in; discomfort, isolation
are somewhat justified by mobility. It was in my name,
but to conquer it, it sufficed for you to cover
the habitable surface with short line segments,
like toy cars that veer at the slightest jolt.
A trestle table, a chimney, and this computer
obscene in its newness: I preferred it to mine,
it wasn’t mine, I could do nothing with it.
At least I had a territory outside, like the man
who spends his whole life on the terrace, or leaning at a bar,
staring through the paned door and the slanting crossroads at a line,
a border of air. I see him. Here rumor only comes
deafened. The feeling of a unity—mine, ours—,
the simple feeling of a meaning is a reflection, rare, which reassures,
does not convince. And this pale illumination on the chair’s arm,
the splash of a pane loosened from the third window
from the left atop the facing building.
The only sun visible from here thus finds itself encased
in a facade and encircled by a shadow with an
unrecognizable outline: ours. We are troglodytes.
Yet you dream of being housed, even if in a tiny and false
space, to escape from this displacement, this hospitality.
The sixth act is to leave everything wide open upon leaving,
to extend the room to the neighborhood. If nothing compares to
the pleasure of escaping, next comes that of getting home.
a fixed building and given your fixtures
a chance to be tested. Where then? By
saying everywhere I invite you that you’re not at home,
you raise a question whose answer you avoid. My guest room,
seven square meters of attic, let in daylight through the roofs edge,
which opened onto a miniature tarred terrace.
Moving without moving in; discomfort, isolation
are somewhat justified by mobility. It was in my name,
but to conquer it, it sufficed for you to cover
the habitable surface with short line segments,
like toy cars that veer at the slightest jolt.
A trestle table, a chimney, and this computer
obscene in its newness: I preferred it to mine,
it wasn’t mine, I could do nothing with it.
At least I had a territory outside, like the man
who spends his whole life on the terrace, or leaning at a bar,
staring through the paned door and the slanting crossroads at a line,
a border of air. I see him. Here rumor only comes
deafened. The feeling of a unity—mine, ours—,
the simple feeling of a meaning is a reflection, rare, which reassures,
does not convince. And this pale illumination on the chair’s arm,
the splash of a pane loosened from the third window
from the left atop the facing building.
The only sun visible from here thus finds itself encased
in a facade and encircled by a shadow with an
unrecognizable outline: ours. We are troglodytes.
Yet you dream of being housed, even if in a tiny and false
space, to escape from this displacement, this hospitality.
The sixth act is to leave everything wide open upon leaving,
to extend the room to the neighborhood. If nothing compares to
the pleasure of escaping, next comes that of getting home.