I again asked the proprietor if there had been any calls for me. He shook his head. Not even from the investigator that you recommended? I asked. He flicked through a pile of notepaper. No, I’m afraid not, he said.
I took the bus out to the industrial area (to the storage warehouse, the mezzanine office). There was no answer; the door was locked.
I am sure that, on the return journey, I saw the same two men bickering over one having jostled the other. I looked at the accuser: a long neck, as if someone had been tugging at it. I looked at the overcoat he was wearing: there was no button on the lapel, no handkerchief in the breast pocket.
the bus
full
the heart
empty
the neck
long
the ribbon
plaited
the feet
flat
flat and flattened
the place
vacant
and the unexpected meeting near
the station with its thousand
extinguished lights
of the heart, of that neck, of that
ribbon, of those feet,
of the vacant place,
and of that button.
Published in Exercices de Style, Éditions Gallimard, 1947, and in English in Exercises in Style, Alma Classics, 1993
A Personal Anthology 