I have names I can speak,

and others I can't possibly pronounce

Some leak like crimes against professional secrecy

Some are unsinkable like the Titanic

Some lie splintered

at the lonliest islets of the archipelago

Some are known only by hearsay

I calculate the state of humanity

by the names I have faces or smells for,

but it happens that a New Name climbs

lika a mountain up a Himalayan or Lapland scree,

and covers the sun with a dark face,

or becomes the sun

But I must face it;

I owe it to myself not to become indebted,

carrying my face on a stick around the countryside;

a loose totem

worthy a thousand pages by Claude Lévi-Strauss,

lighting up like Caryl Chessman at the Holy Chair

pleading with the Pope for canonization in advance,

ending up carrying my beggar's bowl through city circuits,

coming to the conclusion that this could be the end of something