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In Japan, when you die, they wheel what’s left of you out of the incinerator, and what’s left of your family takes turns picking with special chopsticks. It looks like they have gathered to dine over a dead campfire, but they are not, of course, eating you. They are feeding you to the round mouth of an urn: only in pieces, Father, to the fire. In their bright swimsuits, my daughters spill warm sand over my skin as I lie still, watching the sun needle the sky. The baby licks her fingers to tell, perhaps, if I am ready, her bald head white with lotion, her mouth full of vowels. The older one says nothing above the ocean’s slow rush, but scoops and pats to get me done and gone. I’ve never been to Japan, but once, a globe of glass found me at the clear end of a wave. It drifted from the other side, my mother said. Cold and slick, it glistened as I held it up with both hands and looked through to the green flames of the sun before tasting the salt with my tongue.

I wanted so ably to reassure you, I wanted the man you took to be me, to comfort you, and got up, and went to the window, pushed back, as you asked me to, the curtain, to see the outline of the trees in the night outside. The light, love, the light we felt then, greyly, was it, that came in, on us, not merely my hands or yours, or a wetness so comfortable, but in the dark then as you slept, the grey figure came so close and leaned over, between us, as you slept, restless, and my own face had to see it, and be seen by it, the man it was, your grey lost tired bewildered brother, unused, untaken— hated by love, and dead, but not dead, for an instant, saw me, myself the intruder, as he was not. I tried to say, it is all right, she is happy, you are no longer needed. I said, he is dead, and he went as you shifted and woke, at first afraid, then knew by my own knowing what had happened— and the light then of the sun coming for another morning in the world.

I saw Eternity the other night, Like a great ring of pure and endless light, All calm, as it was bright; And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years, Driv’n by the spheres Like a vast shadow mov’d; in which the world And all her train were hurl’d. The doting lover in his quaintest strain Did there complain; Near him, his lute, his fancy, and his flights, Wit’s sour delights, With gloves, and knots, the silly snares of pleasure, Yet his dear treasure All scatter’d lay, while he his eyes did pour Upon a flow’r. The darksome statesman hung with weights and woe, Like a thick midnight-fog mov’d there so slow, He did not stay, nor go; Condemning thoughts (like sad eclipses) scowl Upon his soul, And clouds of crying witnesses without Pursued him with one shout. Yet digg’d the mole, and lest his ways be found, Work’d under ground, Where he did clutch his prey; but one did see That policy; Churches and altars fed him; perjuries Were gnats and flies; It rain’d about him blood and tears, but he Drank them as free. The fearful miser on a heap of rust Sate pining all his life there, did scarce trust His own hands with the dust, Yet would not place one piece above, but lives In fear of thieves; Thousands there were as frantic as himself, And hugg’d each one his pelf; The downright epicure plac’d heav’n in sense, And scorn’d pretence, While others, slipp’d into a wide excess, Said little less; The weaker sort slight, trivial wares enslave, Who think them brave; And poor despised Truth sate counting by Their victory. Yet some, who all this while did weep and sing, And sing, and weep, soar’d up into the ring; But most would use no wing. O fools (said I) thus to prefer dark night Before true light, To live in grots and caves, and hate the day Because it shews the way, The way, which from this dead and dark abode Leads up to God, A way where you might tread the sun, and be More bright than he. But as I did their madness so discuss One whisper’d thus, “This ring the Bridegroom did for none provide, But for his bride.”

When I learned I could own a piece of The World I got my chequebook out. Eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. My wife's bright eye affirmed it. As do the soothing neutral tones and classic-contemporary decor of our professionally designed apartments, private verandahs before which the globe, endlessly and effortlessly circumnavigated, slips by, allowing residents no end of exotic ports, a new destination every few days to explore with a depth we hadn't thought possible. It's not how things are on The World that is mystical, not the market and deli, proximity of masseuse and sommelier, not the gym, our favourite restaurant, our other favourite restaurant, the yacht club, the library, the golf pro, the pool, but that it exists at all, a limited whole, a logic and a feeling. What looks like freedom is, in fact, the perfection of a plan, and property a stocktaking laid against us in a measure. The difference between a thing thought, and done. One can ignore neither the practical applications nor the philosophical significance of our onboard jewelry emporium, its $12 million inventory, natural yellow diamonds from South Africa no one needs, thus satisfying the criteria for beauty. Without which there is no life of the mind. What we share, though, transcends ownership, our self-improvement guaranteed by the itineraries, licensed experts who prepare us for each new harbour and beyond, deliver us into the hands of native companions on The World's perpetual course. The visual field has no limits. And the eye— the eye devours. Polar bears, musk oxen, rare thick-billed murre. We golfed on the tundra and from The World were airlifted to pristine snowfields, clifftops where we dined alfresco above frozen seas. The World is the entirety. The largest ship ever to traverse the Northwest Passage. How the silent energy coursed between us. Fundamental rules had changed. Except, with time, it seems a sort of accident— natural objects combined in states of affairs, their internal properties. Accusatory randomness and proliferation of types, brutal quantity literally brought to our doors. Or past them, as if on the OLED high-def screen of our circumstances, which hides more than it reveals. For what we see could be other than it is. Whatever we're able to describe at all could be other than it is. Such assaults on our finer feelings require an appeal to order, to the exercise of discipline a private Jacuzzi represents, from which one might peacefully enjoy the singular euphoria of the Panama Canal or long-awaited departure from fetid Venice. There is some truth in solipsism, but I fear I'm doing it wrong, standing at the rail for ceremonial cast-offs thunderously accessorized with Vangelis or "Non, je ne regrette rien," made irritable by appreciative comments about the light. In Reykjavík or Cape Town, it's the same. Familiarity without intimacy is the cost of privacy, security of a thread count so extravagant its extent can no longer be detected. Even at capacity, The World is eerily empty: its crew of highly trained specialists in housekeeping, maintenance, beauty, and cuisine—the heart and soul of the endeavour—are largely unseen and likely where the fun is. We sit at the captain's table but don't know him. He's Italian. I think on my Clarksville boyhood long before EPS, ROE— retractable clothesline sunk in concrete, modest backyard a staging ground for potential we felt infinite to the degree our parents knew it wasn't. The unknown is where we played. And while fulfilment of a premeditated outcome confers a nearly spiritual comfort of indifference to the time of year, a paradise of fruits always in season, the span of choice defines its limit, which cannot be exceeded. The sea rolls over, props on an elbow, and now is heard the small sound of a daydream running softly aground. Dissatisfaction, in a Danish sense. On prevailing winds a scent of compromise; for one tires of the spacewalk outside what is the case. Beyond immediate luxuries lives speculation and the tragic impression one is yet to be born. It could be when all pursuits have been satisfied, life's problems will remain untouched. But doubt exists only where questions exist. The World satisfies its own conditions. It argues for itself. Herein lies an answer.

“I busy too,” the little boy said, lost in his book about a little boy, lost in his book, with nothing but a purple crayon and his wits to get him out. “Nobody can sit with me, I have no room. I busy too. So don’t do any noise. We don’t want any noise right now.” He leafs through once, leafs twice; the pictures, mixed with windy sighs, grow dizzy, world as difficult, high-drifting as the two-day snow that can not stop. How will the bushes, sinking deeper and deeper, trees and birds, wrapt up, ever creep out again? Any minute now the blizzard, scared and wild, the animals lost in it—O the fur, the red-eyed claws, crying for their home—may burst into the room. Try words he’s almost learned on them? He sighs, “I need a man here; I can’t do all this work alone.” And still, as though intent on reading its own argument, winter continues thumbing through itself.

What over the gable-end and high up under tangled cloud that raven might be saying to its tumble-soaring mate or what the blackbird might intend when chattering among scattered breadcrumbs or what the bellowing of one cow then another in the near field might mean remains beyond my ken—being all noise for which no words will manage though all is language settling and unsettling the world beyond me . . . and yet there’s the dunnock in all its dun colours at work among the small stones and patchy grass of the driveway and here’s the robin’s aggressive tilt at breadcrumbs and there goes the sudden shriek of the blackbird . . . all alive inside the inhuman breath-pattern of the wind trawling every last leaf and blade of grass and flinging rain like velvet pebbles onto the skylight: nothing but parables in every bristling inch of the out-of-sight unspoken never-to-be-known pure sense-startling untranslatable there of the world as we find it.

Not the smoothness, not the insane clocks on the square, the scent of manure in the municipal parterre, not the fabrics, the sullen mockery of Tweety Bird, not the fresh troops that needed freshening up. If it occurred in real time, it was OK, and if it was time in a novel that was OK too. From palace and hovel the great parade flooded avenue and byway and turnip fields became just another highway. Leftover bonbons were thrown to the chickens and geese, who squawked like the very dickens. There was no peace in the bathroom, none in the china closet or the banks, where no one came to make a deposit. In short all hell broke loose that wide afternoon. By evening all was calm again. A crescent moon hung in the sky like a parrot on its perch. Departing guests smiled and called, "See you in church!" For night, as usual, knew what it was doing, providing sleep to offset the great ungluing that tomorrow again would surely bring. As I gazed at the quiet rubble, one thing puzzled me: What had happened, and why? One minute we were up to our necks in rebelliousness, and the next, peace had subdued the ranks of hellishness. So often it happens that the time we turn around in soon becomes the shoal our pathetic skiff will run aground in. And just as waves are anchored to the bottom of the sea we must reach the shallows before God cuts us free.

Even in a palace, life may be led well! So spake the imperial sage, purest of men, Marcus Aurelius. But the stifling den Of common life, where, crowded up pell-mell, Our freedom for a little bread we sell, And drudge under some foolish master's ken Who rates us if we peer outside our pen— Match'd with a palace, is not this a hell? Even in a palace! On his truth sincere, Who spoke these words, no shadow ever came; And when my ill-school'd spirit is aflame Some nobler, ampler stage of life to win, I'll stop, and say: "There were no succour here! The aids to noble life are all within."

A worm fed on the heart of Corinth, Babylon and Rome. Not Paris raped tall Helen, But this incestuous worm, Who lured her vivid beauty To his amorphous sleep. England! famous as Helen Is thy bethothal sung. To him the shadowless, More amorous than Solomon.

When the earth is turned in spring The worms are fat as anything. And birds come flying all around To eat the worms right off the ground. They like the worms just as much as I Like bread and milk and apple pie. And once, when I was very young, I put a worm right on my tongue. I didn't like the taste a bit, And so I didn't swallow it. But oh, it makes my Mother squirm Because she thinks I ate that worm!