The light makes me afraid

I see the edge of the land.
Yesterday, it was a small island, hidden by the waves.

Today, I feel closer to it, and it excites me,
the light of the lighthouse excites me!

Today, I often visit the rocky shore.

I have looked at them so many times!

They confuse me,
strong and fearless against the tide's pull,
a big rock that seems to know what it means to be a man,
a man who tends to run away with the waves,
like the gannet that flies in the quiet of the sea.

Or maybe, just maybe.

Sitting on the rock, waiting for the sadness of each afternoon,
while death accepts its own loneliness, which sometimes
is also mine.

Like bodies that, together, hide in the mouths of fish.

II
Perhaps I knew the lighthouse keeper, I know him,
as thin as the flash of light
covering the shore, a man who is coming.

His safe arrival in the harbor, like any ship,
between one place and another in the dark.

Yesterday I imagined it reaching out—its beam on my face—
yesterday I imagined it covering my body,
helping us, man to man, in the faraway place of everything.

I don't know if it exists, I don't know if it sees the remains of a ship,
like bodies that, joined together, hide in the mouths of fish.

III
I have never allowed myself to be a lighthouse,
the way it works with efficiency,
its light moving toward the horizon.

I have never been the lighthouse keeper;
I do not shine the light on the one who returns,
violent in the gentleness of the trip
from the shore to the harbor,
from the harbor to the city that opens to us,
that opens its arms to our madness.

I have never been who I am,
defeated at the lighthouse's edge,
death, which is not light, but mystery.