LEZAMIANS (from short stories by Lezama Lima)

 It was not a detached air, one did not swim in the air zzzzzzzzzzz  Without greeting him, he said: Let's not go in, the waves on the seawall are raging, I want to see them zzzzzzzzzzzzz let's go zzzzzzzzzzz Already at the expected place, the waves entered through the gaze, then a desperate hollow was formed, quickly filled by clouds. The landscape premiered a different appearance in the face of the different style or manner of the gaze. The waves leaped like steel around a fist that lent them a ferrous and cottony skeleton. The crowd, always in abundance in cities, gathered to yawn at fires, to light a lamp during floodszzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz They had arrived in front of the waves somewhat forgetful; that didn't seem to be their purpose. It had served its purpose momentarily, but a more elusive secret was striking them zzzzzzzzz The curvature of the waves, the crude assimilation of one wave by another, produced a wave of vapor devoid of memories. As if clouds were spreading between them and turning the runaway children into humid archipelagos. A ship gently bumps against them and is slowly repelled by the hands of a clock. They changed course, the purpose that had united them invisibly lost. The words that bound them were going to remain more tense and secret. The two withdrew, ignoring each other. They moved away from the waves, believing that, tired of stylizing the coastline, they would lose themselves in a more compromising adventure. More than seeing the waves, they had guessed them entering the watery atmosphere they were displacing; a distant sound reached them: one wave pushing another, propelling curved sounds that thinned to penetrate the cottony bay of their ears. They had already decided to walk. The initial incitement had become the bearable tedium of having to walk zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz I no longer waited for the next wave, but for the shifting attraction of the bluish nubs, equal, unequal, appearing, submerging. The wave that lay, then the fixity of one of the nubs, the other was so improbable. The moistened gaze elongated asphalted fish. It was as if a crane, a soft bird, were absorbed by the demanding asphalt that could thus show off its new asphalt crane mark. Everything so diluted that you couldn't say the shield crane on the asphalt zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz felt the invisible humidity on his walk zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz No fixed point could force it, any clearing line was so elongated that it died in the electrified water. Green of a marsh moon, guessing the green of moonlit reedszzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz The dream thickens in the memory of that last wave that finally turned to marble. The wave is the monster that seeks the alabaster bowl when two traveling hands decide to disembark at the same timezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz It made its way to the ears with secret steps, bouncing off the castle, without a bell or a greyhound to break that dampness, to revive the opportunity of that secret swell. He saw the marine uniformity open into a sleepy whirlpool, he glimpsed a tired green seaweed, pearly gray, a frozen riddle, a flowing secret. A small wave arrived, made by the woven reeds, guided only by the noise the fish make as they turned to nip at each other's necks; it seemed that, warned, the seaweed, already beginning to hear its indistinct name, was about to embed itself in the stone. A moment unsatisfied, and the differentiated seaweed, somewhat dizzy, returned to occupy the same placezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz The seaweed cried out for the monarchy of endless sleep. Between the quail's footsteps and the castle's root, the photograph taken in the shadow of the damp noise and the lightness could guarantee the emergence of differentiated seaweedzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz