The old-town market-place! I love its smells,
 its colours. I love to feel its dust
in my nostrils and its noise
in the innermost pores of my heart.
Soon the streets will be deserted, the noises cease one by one,
the bargains stop, the buyers and sellers
will collect their belongings and start for home.
The market-place will be emptied of its contents
like a vessel from which water has leaked out.
A silence, like that which follows after a vibrating chord is stilled,
will pervade everywhere.
When an intensely animated and vibrant instrument is silenced,
the listener is plunged into a gloom
which penetrates deep.
It is in such moments of silence
that I would often re-enact the mysteries
 that would not open up.
I wander through the streets of the deserted market-place,
 its intricate mazes, the narrow lanes and alleys,
 where none knows me.
I sit under a tree, pull a shawl around my shoulders,
and a hood to cover my head.
Hardly recognizable now, I sit there, watching the flux of life.
The houses all around, are quietly huddled
 like solid masses of rocks carved from inside,
revealing their interiors filled with quivering light,
and I am in all of them now.