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(there’ll be days like this.) — The Shirelles These folks ’bout to respect me into the grave. At eighty Mama said, (mama said) “People think you change when you’re old but you still got a girl inside.” And men could see her, too — that pink silk dress — soothe that hotel bellboy “Boy, I’m old enough to be your mama.” He coy “well, you ain’t.” But seventy is prime time for me to own what “elder” brings. I reap myself with the respect they sow. They don’t know I got the road wide open in me.

My God, I heard this day That none doth build a stately habitation But he that means to dwell therein. What house more stately hath there been, Or can be, than is man, to whose creation All things are in decay? For man is ev'ry thing, And more: he is a tree, yet bears more fruit; A beast, yet is, or should be, more; Reason and speech we only bring; Parrots may thank us if they are not mute, They go upon the score. Man is all symmetry, Full of proportions, one limb to another, And all to all the world besides; Each part may call the furthest brother, For head with foot hath private amity, And both with moons and tides. Nothing hath got so far But man hath caught and kept it as his prey; His eyes dismount the highest star; He is in little all the sphere; Herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they Find their acquaintance there. For us the winds do blow, The earth doth rest, heav'n move, and fountains flow. Nothing we see but means our good, As our delight, or as our treasure; The whole is either our cupboard of food, Or cabinet of pleasure. The stars have us to bed; Night draws the curtain, which the sun withdraws; Music and light attend our head; All things unto our flesh are kind In their descent and being; to our mind In their ascent and cause. Each thing is full of duty; Waters united are our navigation; Distinguished, our habitation; Below, our drink; above, our meat; Both are our cleanliness. Hath one such beauty? Then how are all things neat! More servants wait on man Than he'll take notice of; in ev'ry path He treads down that which doth befriend him, When sickness makes him pale and wan. Oh mighty love! Man is one world, and hath Another to attend him. Since then, my God, thou hast So brave a palace built, O dwell in it, That it may dwell with thee at last! Till then, afford us so much wit, That, as the world serves us, we may serve thee, And both thy servants be.

A part of, a part of love, hates, hates a part of. A part of, a part of hate, loves, loves a part of. Loves a part of, a part of the man, the man the state hates. Hates a part of, a part of the name, the name the people love. Hates wholeness, hate. Loves togetherness, love, the togetherness of the large human movement. Loves togetherness, loves. Hates wholeness, hate, the wholeness of the small human hyphen. De Wet, de Klerks. De Klerk, de Wets. Botha. Moneydeala, your worship makes an island of freedom. Detained Harassed Banned. The trap, the trap, the trap. The capture, the capture, the capture. The trial, the trial, the trial. So do we So we to. So do the Cape parts, a part of, the Dutch parts. Ho wick, Ri vo nia. She Who Tries her sacred knock, her High Organ of little male Anasi. Her Eastern Star in his Malta night. Order, a part of. Breytenback's albino, Gordimer's Beethoven. A part his, a part hers. The odor of Resistance, Brutus Dennis! A part invests. Victor, a Verster. A part divests. All American     Apartheids    pulled South. Dela "

Six years ago, the big museum sold eight famous paintings to purchase, for unspecified millions, Gustave Caillebotte’s Man at His Bath. Now it’s hip to have a print of it, and whenever I see one hung for decoration, I’m almost certain that this is what Caillebotte had in mind when he broke out the oils in 1884: some twenty-first-century bitch in Boston catching a glimpse of a framed reproduction, recollecting a study about how washing oneself may induce a sense of culpability. What I remember is he insisted I clean before leaving. That, and he was trying to be dreamlike. He took my jaw in his hand and said in the next life, we’ll really be together , and the clamp in his voice made me almost certain he knew something I did not. Now I eat right, train hard, get my shots. This life — I’m angling to remain in this life as long as I can, being almost certain, as I am, what’s after —

I envied the dog lying in the yard so I did it. But there was a pebble under my flank so I got up and looked for the pebble, brushed it away and lay back down. My dog thus far overlooked the pebble. I guess it's her thick Lab fur. With my head downhill the blood gorged me with ideas. Not good. Got up. Turned around. Now I see hundreds of infinitesimal ants. I'm on an ant home. I get up and move five feet. The dog hasn't moved from her serene place. Now I'm rather too near a thicket where I saw a big black snake last week that might decide to join me. I moved near the actual dog this time but she got up and went under the porch. She doesn't like it when I'm acting weird. I'm failing as a dog when my own kind rejects me, but doing better than when I envied birds, the creature the least like us, therefore utterly enviable. To be sure I cheeped a lot but didn't try to fly. We humans can take off but are no good at landing.

"Had he and I but met By some old ancient inn, We should have sat us down to wet Right many a nipperkin! "But ranged as infantry, And staring face to face, I shot at him as he at me, And killed him in his place. "I shot him dead because — Because he was my foe, Just so: my foe of course he was; That's clear enough; although "He thought he'd 'list, perhaps, Off-hand like — just as I — Was out of work — had sold his traps — No other reason why. "Yes; quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down You'd treat if met where any bar is, Or help to half-a-crown."

The man I could have been works for a vital institution,is a vital institution. Without him, walls will crumble, somewhere, paint will peel. He takes a catch. He is outdoorsy and says It was a nightmare and means the traffic. He’s happy to watch a film and stops short of living in one. The man I could have been owns a Subaru pickup the colour of cherry tomatoes. He’s in the black, not in the dark. His mother is calm. Women keep his baby picture in the windownooks of wallets. No one dies on him. The man I could have been owns bits of clothes not worn by uncles first. He has no need of medicine. He walks from Powderhall to Newington in twenty minutes. He plays the piano a little. Without him, havens buckle, sickbeds bloom. The man I could have been lives locally. He is quietly algebraic. Without him, granite will not glister. And when he sees a crisis, he does not dive in feet first. He votes, for he believes in their democracy. The man I could have been has a sense of direction. For him, it was never Miss Scarlet with the dagger in the kitchen. He knows his tilth and sows his seed. He’ll make a father. He is no maven nor a connoisseur. The man I could have been has a season ticket at Tynecastle. He comes in at night and puts on The Best of U2 He browses. He puts fancy stuff in his bathwater. He doesn’t lace up his life with secrets. The man I could have been was born on a high horse. He knows the story of the Willow Pattern. He had a dream last night you’d want to hear about and remembers the words to songs. His back is a saddle where lovers have ridden. The man I could have been has a sovereign speech in him he’s yet to give. He might well wrassle him a bear. He is a man about town. He has the exact fare on him. Without him, motley trauma. The man I could have been, he learns from my mistakes. He never thought it would be you. And no one says he’s looking rather biblical. He has no need of London and walks the middle of the road for it is his. The man I could have been is quick and clean. He is no smalltown Jesus nor a sawdust Cesear. Without him, salt water would enter your lungs. He doesn’t hear these endless xylophones. That’s not him lying over there.

Under the French horns of a November afternoon a man in blue is raking leaves with a wide wooden rake (whose teeth are pegs or rather, dowels). Next door boys play soccer: “You got to start over!” sort of. A round attic window in a radiant gray house waits like a kettledrum. “You got to start . . .” The Brahmsian day lapses from waltz to march. The grass, rough-cropped as Bruno Walter’s hair, is stretched, strewn and humped beneath a sycamore wide and high as an idea of heaven in which Brahms turns his face like a bearded thumb and says, “There is something I must tell you!” to Bruno Walter. “In the first movement of my Second, think of it as a family planning where to go next summer in terms of other summers. A material ecstasy, subdued, recollective.” Bruno Walter in a funny jacket with a turned-up collar says, “Let me sing it for you.” He waves his hands and through the vocalese-shaped spaces of naked elms he draws a copper beech ignited with a few late leaves. He bluely glazes a rhododendron “a sea of leaves” against gold grass. There is a snapping from the brightwork of parked and rolling cars. There almost has to be a heaven! so there could be a place for Bruno Walter who never needed the cry of a baton. Immortality— in a small, dusty, rather gritty, somewhat scratchy Magnavox from which a forte drops like a used Brillo Pad? Frayed. But it’s hard to think of the sky as a thick glass floor with thick-soled Viennese boots tromping about on it. It’s a whole lot harder thinking of Brahms in something soft, white, and flowing. “Life,” he cries (here, in the last movement), “is something more than beer and skittles!” “And the something more is a whole lot better than beer and skittles,” says Bruno Walter, darkly, under the sod. I don’t suppose it seems so dark to a root. Who are these men in evening coats? What are these thumps? Where is Brahms? And Bruno Walter? Ensconced in resonant plump easy chairs covered with scuffed brown leather in a pungent autumn that blends leaf smoke (sycamore, tobacco, other), their nobility wound in a finale like this calico cat asleep, curled up in a breadbasket, on a sideboard where the sun falls.

It’s unbearable to shadowdrift along the seabed. It’s unbearable to grieve when sleeping is more important. The boat is a hammock without strings. As the body is a sleeve not strung to the soul. The boat is chained to the shadow; when the shadow drifts, the boat drifts too. Is it at sea? Or is it just in air? Can a boat live on air alone? The man’s back bleeds. This is all expected of creatures who sacrifice their nudity for solitude and immortality. The flesh is eager to float, fully captivated by the impulse to preserve an array of stillness. The horizon is not skirring and nothing can move on that river made of air. This boat. This boat. This boat that the horizon can’t coat with its own monolithic entreaty. The man bathes in all blemishes of the moon. The man’s body can take imperfection, as he feels complete. His white-grey hair is a type of condensed cloud he can rest his head on. If he must commit suicide, he knows he will rest on a very comfortable pillow, one that he grows from the ovoid base of his skull. It’s good to get all the hard work done first and then unbutton one’s corporeal flesh calmly before the undiluted enterprise of air. His penis is one finger pointing to the line that separates his thighs. Everything is hidden deliciously inside his pituitary gland.

They dropped the charges of homicide, filed new charges of terrorism, dropped the charges of terrorism, filed new charges of public nudity, dropped the charges of public nudity, filed new charges of lewd and lascivious behavior. A spokesman for the FBI said they found him on the hood of an SUV in a part of town known as the “Fruit Loop”. His penis was in another man’s mouth and in the front seat were vials containing a rare strand of bacteria known to cause blindness in rats. They dropped the charges of public nudity and filed new charged of sodomy. A spokesman for the police department said they found him with his pants down and it appeared that his penis was in another man’s anus. But since they could not prove to what degree his penis had penetrated the other man’s anus they dropped the charges of sodomy and filed new charges of assault and battery. A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said that he assaulted a worker from the Department of Public Health who used a Q-tip to extract from inside of his urethra a rare strand of bacteria capable of causing pneumonia in chickens. He was placed in solitary confinement and a spokesman for the Department of Corrections suggested that he was a serious threat to the community. They examined the strand of bacteria found in his urethra but since they did not properly store the bacteria in the appropriate container with the appropriate seals and signatures they could not charge him with intent to commit crimes against humanity. They dropped the charges of intent to commit crimes against humanity and filed new charges of larceny. They said he had stolen the rare strand of bacteria from his employer and that he had done so with the deliberate and malicious intent to harm as many civilians as possible. They tried to verify for whom he had worked during the given time period but since they could not verify the name or location of his employer they dropped the charges of larceny and filed new charges of tax fraud. When they discovered he was privately employed, they dropped the charges of tax fraud and filed new charges of theft with an unregistered weapon. A grocery store in his neighborhood had recently been robbed and the cashier said that the thief had carried the same model of weapon that the man in question kept beneath his bed in case of emergencies. They dropped the charges of theft with an unregistered weapon when they discovered the cashier was partially blind and that the weapon the man in question kept beneath his bed in case of emergencies had been properly purchased and registered. When they found on his bookshelves several works of fiction with blind characters, including King Lear,Oedipus Rex,Endgame, and Blindness by José Saramago, they accused him of conspiring to use the rare strand of bacteria to blind not only the grocer but the seven other blind residents of his neighborhood, each of whom had had perfectly good eyesight until he came to town. They asked him why he had so many books about blindness, but he refused to answer the question. They asked him why he had so many books about blindness and when his attorney arrived the man in question said that he did not know why he had so many books about blindness. They asked his friends and family why he had so many books about blindness. No one knew why he had so many books about blindness and they accused him in the press of anti-social behavior. When his neighbors testified that the man in question enjoyed society as much as he enjoyed a quiet night at home, they dropped the charges of anti-social behavior. They dropped the charges of anti-social behavior and filed new charges of jaywalking. An undercover police officer filmed him with a video camera as he illegally crossed the street. At the advice of his attorney, he pleaded guilty to the charges of jaywalking. He agreed to pay the fine.