The madness known as affirmation, the sickness called belief, the infamy of being happy – all of this reeks of the world, it smacks of this sad thing that’s the earth.

Be indifferent. Love the sunset and the dawn because it does no good, not even for you, to love them. Dress yourself in the gold of the dying afternoon, like a king deposed on a morning of roses in full bloom, with May in the white clouds and the smile of virgins in secluded villas. Let your yearning perish among myrtles, your tedium cease among tamarinds, and may the sound of water accompany all of this as if it were twilight on the banks of a river whose only meaning is to flow – eternal – towards distant seas. The rest is but the life that leaves us, the sparkle in our eyes that fades, the purple robes worn thin even before we don them, the moon that shines down on our exile, the stars that spread their silence over our hour of disillusionment. Assiduous is the sterile and friendly grief that clasps us against its breast with love.

Decadence is my destiny.

My domain of old was in deep valleys. The water that trickled in my dreams was never tainted by blood. The trees’ foliage that forgets life was always green in my forgetting. The moon was fluid like water between stones. Love never reached that valley, which is why life was happy there. Neither love, nor dreams, nor gods in temples – and we walked in the breeze and the indivisible hour without any nostalgia for drunken, useless beliefs.