My entire past becomes someone else, and I weep over a dead life that I carry inside me and never lived. It’s always too late to sing, just as it’s always too late not to sing ...

 

(pause)

 

FIRST WATCHER Soon it will be day . .. Let’s observe silence. That’s what life urges... Near the house where I was born there was a pond. I’d go there and sit next to it, on a tree trunk that had fallen almost into the water ... I’d sit on the end of it and dip my feet in the water, reaching down my toes as far as I could. Then I’d stare hard at the tips of my toes, but not in order to see them. I don’t know why, but my impression is that this pond never existed ... To remember it is like not being able to remember anything ... Who knows why Im saying this and whether I was the one who lived what I remember? ...

 

SECOND WATCHER Dreaming at the seashore makes us sad... We can’t be what we want to be, since whatever it is, we always wish we’d been it in the past... When the wave crashes and the foam hisses, it seems like a thousand tiny voices are speaking. The foam only seems cool to those who suppose it is all one ... Each thing is many, and we know nothing ... Shall I tell you what I dreamed at the seashore?

 

FIRST WATCHER You can tell it, sister, but nothing in us needs you to tell it ... If it’s beautiful, I’m already sorry I’ll have heard it. And if it’s not beautiful, wait... Tell it only after you’ve changed it...

 

SECOND WATCHER I’m going to tell it. It’s not entirely false, since surely nothing is entirely false. It must have happened like this ... One day when I found myself leaning back on top of a cold cliff, having forgotten I ever had a mother and father, a childhood and other days besides that one—on that day I vaguely saw, as if I only thought I’d seen it, a sail passing by in the distance ... Then it vanished ... Returning to myself, I realized that I now had this dream ... I don’t know where it began. And I never saw another sail... None of the ships leaving from ports around here have sails that resemble that sail, not even when the moon is out and the ships pass slowly by in the distance ...

 

FIRST WATCHER I see a ship in the offing through the window. Perhaps it’s the one you saw ...

 

SECOND WATCHER No, sister. The one you see is no doubt bound for some port...