There was a man who lived on my street

who worked as a waiter.

He looked like Charlie Chaplin.

He was taller and fatter than him, but he walked

in the same way, with his feet turned outward

and an unsteady gait, a little moustache and black hair.

He lived alone, in an unheated apartment

on the second floor of an old building.

He spent his day off sitting

watching the billiard players,

and sometimes he would fall asleep on the bench.

The bartender would wake him at closing time,

and he would leave and go home.

In the morning, he had breakfast at the same bar:

a croissant, a cappuccino

and a glass of aged brandy.

I saw him walk past my house every day.

One afternoon, while it was raining,

I ran into him without an umbrella.

He was walking down the street

without even trying to shelter himself from the rain.

I had one, so I lent it to him.

The following morning, I found the umbrella

in the entrance hall of his building, together with a parcel.

Inside was a small book of his poems.

At the end of the summer,

a sign had been put up on the entrance to his building.

I thought: this is how poets leave,

in silence, with a sign saying “For Rent”.

But in the first days of autumn,

I saw him again, drunk, asleep

on the bench in the same bar.

And I thought: this is how, sometimes,

poets move house too.