63 
TERTULLIAN—Your whiteness is a joy to me, Ariel. 
Do you not also feel, (so young) your desire 
to recreate a God? 
ARIEL—A God? I don’t understand. 
TERTULLIAN—Tortured. 
We lack the exact values which would serve 
us as points of departure. 
We lack a point of departure. 
What inclination shall we choose? And the 
curve that we trace is twisted into a 
hyperbola. 
ARIEL—I re-create God for myself perpetually. 
TERTULLIAN—What were you just saying to me? 
Give me your secret and let your peace be 
mine. 
ARIEL—(shrugging his shoulders) You will never understand. 
* 
TERTULLIAN—Ariel . . . 
ARIEL— (sings) 
Ariel sings: 
At the lines of departure 
is there a fitting enough pardon? 
To extract God (and my anticipation) 
Only our dead at the marge of the tunnels 
Shall deliver the day. 
The needle that kills us 
Gives up none of its grace: 
Suspended azure, 
Our butterflies, who wisely crumble. 
Is there enough pardon for me 
In extracting God of my anticipations. 
TERTULLIAN—Ariel . . . 
* 
ARIEL—1, 2, 3 . . . If I counted to one thousand to do peni 
tence? 
TERTULLIAN—Our limits are onerous to those who can feel 
them. And not the artificial limits, our 
collars, but all those that prick the 
body, the play of our flesh, our souls. 
Ariel, to cultivate our refinements, and our routine lives, is 
not to go beyond the limits, but the contrary; for, if our poten-