ARTO MELLERI You experience human growth by becoming more insignificant By seeing clearly up ahead how the sail of ambition no longer lends shade Experience human growth by becoming lighter When useless ballast has been tossed overboard it stays there, in the wake, floats or sinks, for fish or fowl Human growth by not despising the sea chart, the compass By no longer naming your ships Niña, Pinta, Santa Maria By knowing that America has existed before it was found Human growth by not naming everything all the time By not being so stupid By not being stupid? – What if I joined the Poetry Circle Started over Didn't drink or smoke – irritate, curse, stagger about.... Brushed my teeth carefully morning and night For a long time I chew on the pencil, then write – a sample of my work, as it were – '... a story so old that it is almost new again. What pains us today, haunts us and runs us into the ground, there, it receives a purple glow, a hem of gold – as past events always do when the chaff of the everyday is danced away by memory's sieve....' Sounds familiar? Someone else managed to write the same, before me? I'd meet a girl there, a Poetry Circlette We'd start out by interpreting the line 'Lady's Mantle, elves' baptismal font' We'd date, get married Have children, never part I would become the Poet Laureate of the province Who dares to say now that I don't have a goal in life Close