"Since my bones are as yet somewhat younger than yours," I remarked finally, "I will keep them fresh, and now take them into the shade."
We separated.
"Every one sees you in a different light from every one else," I said to myself as I walked along, "and even the wisest fails to see you as you are; for even the humblest human soul is like the sun, which one can gaze upon only through a dull medium."
Along shady paths I meandered toward the bamboo alley, which was like a grove, in that it formed a high vaulted way under closely interwoven branches, and its twilight was cool. Here I strode back and forth, sat down, wandered on again, in physical discomfort and mental instability. The old man had excited and aroused me; I pondered this and that, I could not stick to any subject whatever, I hurried from the hundredth to the thousandth thing and took some hurt from every one.
I sat down again, and again walked back and forth.
All at once I found myself at a cross path; I stopped involuntarily and thought, "I have stood here before; what is there here?" So it was. Two days before, I had here been struck by the fact that just above the knot on the bamboo stem there was a broad ring of blue-white hoarfrost, which blended imperceptibly with the greenish-yellow of the stem. In this fine congealed breath, I had thought at that time, one ought to write a secret message to one's sweetheart, in dainty characters, with a feather from a humming-bird's wing! Since I could not find a hummingbird, I had sharpened the end of a twig of bamboo, and with that had scribbled in the fragrant circlet the words, "Where art thou, beloved?"
Since then I had not again thought of the matter; but now I sought out the thick stem once more, and thought I ought to have written a poem on it, began to compose verses, and murmured:
A saudade no coração
mi e doce como o teu bejo--
then I stood a long time with my head down, trying to formulate the following verses; and finally I added:
vivrei d'esta consolacão,
de ti, e se nunca te vejo!