All my life I chased a bird
Its flight was fast, and I walked tirelessly
On a land surveyed by so many others
The feathers of the bird were golden, they shone
Each time a cloud slid towards oblivion
For a long time, I went after it, for a long time
I hoped he would notice me from its perch in the sky
But the bird didn’t seem to care about mortals,
Its eyes were sad and its bearing was haughty
It looked like it was going to drown in a liquid sky
Hit by the harpoon of an invisible fisherman
Above the skyscrapers, I saw the bird
Swooping down to reach a city plunged in the night,
Above the valleys and lakes, my hand in visor
I watched it, as one contemplates the past and the future
The bird was my destination as it was always flying out of my reach
Though I never stopped looking for its light
My life was at stake, I had set as my only goal
In this existence trailing in darkness
To always live close to its swift wingbeats
It would sometimes notice me, a walking stick stuck in the ground
Following the path that led to a snowy peak
Or rolling down a slope on sun-wet grass
But never did the bird stop on a branch to let me hear its music,
Never did it stop its frantic flight, its irresistible race
So I continued to chase it
I secretly hoped that it would come down from the sky and land in front of me
I would have whispered a secret in its wild language
I would have told it the path I have traveled
Since I first saw it,
Splitting the clouds like a golden arrow,
How I’ve lost my sight to the glow of its feathers,
Wasted time on inaccessible paths,
Climbed the middle mountains with bruised legs,
Pierced the night with my iron will,
Always following it at a certain distance
But that moment never came, one day
I noticed that the skies were empty
There was no more Gods, no more golden bird,
I closed my eyes on the falling evening
Silence inhabited each of those illusory seconds
At that moment, sitting on a blue moss at the edge of the grave,
I understood that all this time, the bird I was chasing
Had only been the reflection of my pupils on the black dai of the sky
My heart had longed for what it had always carried within it
So I stopped running, I reached out to the wind that blew
Like an old friend on my already heavy eyelids,
And I returned to the fog of the great capitals
Without pursuing any other goal than the gold of existence itself