ὁ Σκοτεινός [ho Skoteinos]
The weeping philosopher weeping
in profile
for the cameo-maker
whose little flame casts his shadow
shivering against the stucco wall:
I am the shadow,
Herakleitos sighs,
and that is the man.
The cameo-maker lifts his bulino—
he has come all the way from Formosa
to relieve this Ephesian.
I disagree, he says.
In my land we do not say such things.
We would say that only the flame
makes you think it so.
Then why do you make cameos? asks
Herakleitos
For just that reason, the cameo-maker
explains,
To me, man is but a lowing
coke bottle
lowing empty in the wind.
Herakleitos, for the first time in his life,
almost laughs.
Why not just say that man is
a rubik’s cube
scrambled by the gods?
Oh philosopher! ho Skoteinós! cries the cameo-maker,
Don’t you know?
Inside every rubik’s cube:
an odradek!
— Felix Singer