There is a November housefly in here

in the bedroom facing north-northwest

upstairs,

buzzing all the more sporadically,

and - as I perceive it -

ever more desperate

Sometimes it flies into my reading lamp shade,

diagonally to the right behind me;

tumbles around in there,

hitting the inside of the thin lampshade,

gamelan metallic,

when I lie in bed

- as of now with Göran Rosenberg's ”A Brief Stop

On the Road from Auschwitz” -

and I fear it's going to burn itself,

until I realize that we have a modern,

durable & coolish lamp inside that shade

This sole fly has buzzed in the bedroom

- not in any other room in the house -

longer than science expects a winter fly to,

and yet it throws itself about,

buzzes in my hair, in the lampshade, over the walls,

albeit more seldom now, in short flights,

interleaved with irregular silences

in a kind of hoqetues-thinning à la John Cage;

bumps into things here & there in sharp snappings

in a snug prison without food

- and I know,

that if I and this fly were the only two alive

left on Earth,

it would mean the world to me,

and I would do anything and all

for it

But, really, this is that same fly

who lives its last days

here in our bedroom,

and whom I have protected

against my Wildwife's vague ideas

about a swatter

It really is as essential as ”the One”

who buzzes about in my dystopic imagination,

and each living being is the only one