We’d been walking for a while

when I saw the giant crouching

along the side of the road.

There’s a giant, I said,

but my companions replied,

that’s just a rock.

I walked over to the giant.

Asked him to show himself.

The giant stood up.

My companions started shouting:

you made the rock float!

They didn’t see the giant.

We went on.

A little girl came along.

What a pretty little girl,

I said to my companions.

There’s nothing there, they replied.

And so I asked the little girl

for her hand and placed it in theirs.

They could feel her, but they did not see her.

Dawn sketched out the landscape.

Absence on the face of nuns:

the Moon was glimmering.

The choir of infants flared up.

In the ever more unbearable

sound we took a stick and

carved a line in the dirt,

and we all stepped across it.

Then it was silent.

The night became clear.

In the distance we heard

the clattering of trains.

One of us set off towards the sound,

the other went back to the road,

I crawled into the nook of a tree.

And now for centuries I watch

hiding among the ngs

the excursionists that wander here.