It’s cold.
Cold and dark, terribly dark.
Ancient forces clash and clash with invisible powers.
The gods of all worlds, old and new,
mysterious nebulae and clouds of multicolored gas are unleashed into infinity. From chaos came
dust, and from dust a star.
I won’t bore you with the details, but long afterward, the river made its way down the steep
mountain slopes, breaking through the ice and eternal snows that were still there, tearing shreds of
granite from the toughest rocks.
All in the flesh of the same chaos and the same stars.
And the river flowed.
For a long time.
It lived out its life as a river, its mountainous and tormented childhood, until its end,
slow and disorderly, on a land too flat to give it the strength to dig its deathbed.
So he spread out, stretched out, like an old lion that never stops crawling.
It dispersed, moving, through the hollows and cracks, in an immense delta,
on whose banks it deposited its precious cargo of rocks and sludge.
Always the same atoms, remember.
And sometimes the delta disappeared under the sea, or stretched further, further than anyone had
ever seen it.
Then people came.
Lots of people.
All sorts of furry and feathered animals, maybe even a few creepy crawlies with scales and sharp
claws.
Finally you turned up with your oversized boots,
worn jeans and tired hands.
The time of a fire in a fireplace, the time of a storm, the time of a summer.
The salt clung to your hair, but you resisted despite everything.
Despite the icy wind and the ferocious mosquitoes,
you drove your stakes through the brackish marshes.
You still spent a few lovely Sundays in the sun, didn’t you? Remember.
With your kids running through the reed bed and the caravan swaying under the weight of noisy
friends. You can still hear the horses’ hooves on the dry ground. It rumbles, it shakes and already it’s
over.
After the dust settles, you look out over the meadow, its crimson hues glistening.
Autumn is here. And you have to leave.
Before the sea.
Listen, this delta is the history of the world.