Adult? Never Never

Adult? Never, never—like life itself,
which never matures, forever green
from splendid day to splendid day,
I cannot help but remain true
to the wondrous monotony of mystery.
This is why, when happy,
I’ve never given up on myself—and why
in my anguish over all I’ve done wrong
I’ve never felt any real remorse.
Forever equal to what is left unsaid,
at the origin of what I am.
*
It would be so easy to unveil
this light or this shadow . . . One word,
and the life that lives alone in me,
beneath the voices every man invents
to get closer to fugitive
truths, would be expressed at last.
But no such word exists.
If, however, in the din rising up
from the streets I hear a sound slightly
clearer than the rest—or if I inhale
among the season’s scents a sharper breath
of leaves, awash with rain, then,
by suggestion, my ineffable life
looms before me, for only an instant . . .
And I can’t bear it . . . But one day,
oh, one day, that sight will make me shout,
and my shout will be a revelation . . .