I have a neighbor who washes

his car two or three times a day.

And I think how happy he looks.

There's no difference between the neighbor
who washes his car three times a day

and the one who searches in his library for who-knows-what.

My neighbor knows what grime is and removes it.

The one who searches in volumes
of history, gets overwhelmed by philosophers,
doesn't know what he's looking for, he's wandering blindly.

If I could, I would choose to be my happy neighbor,
go out every day with a bucket of water,
plunge a purple sponge into that thick layer of detergent and
ammonia and polish
the wheels as if there were no tomorrow.

There is poetry in those bubbles

no less than in the texts of Mallarmé.