My Friend, Plagiarist

I would gladly spare my Sunday Villa, my friend for you, I can spare my girlfriend for a night for you, gladly. You flatter me so much indeed! I'll do anything to have you always by my side to have breakfast with me, stroll in the gardens with me, share a smoke, a drink, a chat, a joke with me. You always sing my praise, humour me with my own humour, rephrase my own old jokes in a such a way, they appear always new to me. You recycle me, reinvent me, re-energise me, re-discover me without you I would have been long long dead, my friend it is because of you alone that I am alive still in bookshelves, coffee houses, recycled PhD theses. You are the only one in the world who reads all my poems, all my works. People buy my books, read and forget me; but you You never forget me You never forsake me. Can I ever repay even one-hundredth of your debt? But I am afraid, my friend, that even after death you will follow me. No, I am not afraid of death, no - You remember how many nights we spent quietly together in lonely corridors - talking of Rousseau, Virgil, Dante how many nights strolled together in deserted cafetarias invoking memories of Shakespeare and all the other Bards how many nights spent together in those quiet cemeteries talking to the ghosts of Neruda, Nabokov and Lolita? No, I am not afraid of you, I am afraid of your ghost - after death. You may stalk my books, my epitaphs, my biographies. I wonder how you never got tired of it all, of my friendship of my constant companionship, I am the same old man - what can an old man offer to you - you who spent your entire life with me without gaining anything? You became my shadow, remained a shadow only never caring to achieve anything on your own, neglecting your body, soul, your everything always thinking of me, you became just Me you followed my works propagated my words never creating a word, a work, a dream of your own - neither my son, nor wife, nor mother, nor father can ever hope do what you did for me, to me, without being asked - I feel so embarrassed the way you have obliged me for ever. *******