it wants the whole man

.
Here was the harbour
Leonard Cohen

Here was the Harbour, crowded with white ships, the gulls showing how much silver there was in the sunlight as they fell out of the sky like handfuls of polished rice, or climbed in smoky squadrons at the sun until their wings turned silver and they descended again to astonish the floating garbage.

Who doesn’t give his heart to things that soar, kites or jet planes or a sharp distant sail? I tried to give you more than my heart, I tried to yield my loathing, my ambition, all my tiny sicknesses, I tried to give away a new desire which I had hardly suspected but which was growing violently in the metal sunlight, like a germ culture suddenly surrounded by its own ideal conditions.

The gulls continued their cold acrobatics and refused to bear the smudges of my uneasiness: I think that more than hunger the sky was their master, they performed for the endless blue sky, confetti for some vast ceremony, an eternal wedding.

Give what you want to the gulls, the sky is not satisfied with the smudges of your character. It demands stories; of men the sky demands all manner of stories, entertainments, embroideries, just as it does of its stars and constellations. The sky does not care for this trait or that affliction, it wants the whole man lost in his story, abandoned in the mechanics of action, touching his fellows, leaving them, hunting the steps, dancing the old circles. The sky wants diagrams of our lives, it stores them like little curious wrist-watches, they are our wedding gifts.

in Parasites of Heaven, 1966
No mar, como no lago, "a lua toda brilha". Um homem ao espelho, aqui estático, ali em vôo. "Diagrams of our lives" a minha imagem favorita, talvez, que elas se coleccionam neste pedaço. Fragmented self vs. silvery flight, sky=wedding, life=constellation=time. Mr. Cohen, did you ever own an Omega Constellation wrist-watch?