I repeat what a voice I don’t hear tells me ... But I must have really lived by the seashore ... I love things that wave this way or that. There are waves in my soul. I seem to rock when I walk ... I feel like walking right now. I don’t do it, because nothing’s worth doing, especially when it’s something we feel like doing ... The hills are what I fear... They can’t possibly be so large and still. They must have a stony secret they refuse to tell ... If I could lean out that window without seeing hills, then someone in whom I feel happy would, for a moment, lean out of my soul ...

 

FIRST WATCHER I myself love the hills ... On this side of all hills life is always ugly ... On the other side, where my mother lives, we used to sit in the shade of tamarind trees and talk about going to other lands . .. There everything was long and happy like the song of two birds, one on either side of the path ... Our thoughts were the only clearings in the forest. And our dreams were that the trees would cast some other calm besides their shadows on the ground ... Surely that was how we lived—I and I don’t know if anyone else ... Tell me this was true so that I won’t have to cry ...

 

SECOND WATCHER I lived among rocks in plain view of the sea ... The hem of my skirt whipped cool and salty against my bare legs... I was small and wild ... Today I’m afraid of having been ... I seem to sleep through the present... Speak to me of fairies. I’ve never heard anyone speak of them . .. The ocean was too big to ever make me think of them ... It’s cozier in life to be small... Were you happy, sister?

 

FIRST WATCHER I’m beginning, in this moment, to have been so ... Then too, it all happened in the shade ...