Oh, how many ifs arise at every step!

But isn’t if a synonym for choice?

(the answer’s in a future dossier).

 

Past each if lie millions of options, don’t they?

Choice. Entire worlds.

And not one line can hatch without a nudge from doubts.

And not one hand, not one river vows that its intentions will persist.

And if that’s so, then life means simply if: if not by faith, then calculation.

No other choice exists in the innumerable non-existent worlds.

 

But what is, what exists, doesn’t contain a choice or if.

 

 

And yet if

we realize all ifs

by means of blues’s harmonic ideal,

then we get the same eternal blues —

the same one in each designated moment —

like changeless imperceptible pulsations,

which vibrate in a thick embodied fog.

 

 

— T. Apraksina