David Lehman

Why did the moth fly into the flame? Was it for the same reason That Achilles died young? Who gets more fun out of sex, The man or the woman? (Be sure to explain how you can tell.) Which is more real to you, heaven or hell? Why do sinners’ ways prosper? What causes the death of love— The love of death? Did Adam and Eve have a choice? Did the Virgin Mary? What are we afraid of, anyway? Even agnostics have the right to say “thank god,” don’t they? Looking at these dancing atoms, shall I say I saw a ring Of pure and endless light? Or did I dream the whole thing? Whom shall I say is calling? Are you in if it’s your wife? Are you willing to relocate? Do you like your life? What makes this night different from all other nights? Would you say it’s your fate to be always, Without exception, five minutes late? If you arrived At 9:10, would the ceremony have started at 9:05 Though it had been scheduled for 9:15? As you walk down The aisle, and the others rivet their attention to you, Do you ask yourself what you’re going to do, As though it mattered, as if you knew?

People in the middle ages didn't think they were living Between two more important and enlightened eras; Nor did they see themselves as the players In act three of a tragedy in five acts. It was not always late winter in the middle ages. People in the middle ages were not all middle-aged Though it is enjoyable on occasion to assume that they were. The sun was as bright in the dark ages As it is now—maybe a fraction brighter, in fact. Think of the middle ages and what do you see: Gloomy cathedrals, students dressed like monks in the rain, Or a band of drunken pilgrims telling obscene jokes, Or heroes embarking for the nearest wilderness come April? Your answer will reveal yourself to yourself But you may not know it—may choose to hide In hazy visions of a serene and indescribable paradise. And paradise, as we all know, may be paradise when we’re dead, But is boredom on earth, alas. We never think of ennui in relation to the middle ages. Should we? Did Thomas Aquinas never get bored Cooking up elaborate refutations of diminutive heresies? No, and you shouldn’t either. Nor did the clerks of Oxford tire of the sin against the Holy Ghost, Trying to figure out what it was. On chill September mornings when I smoked too much the night before And I drank too much the night before And a sinister cough rises up From the depths of the belly of my being, I like to imagine living in Provence Or even in Rheims during the middle ages.

I. The question is not how like the animals we are But how we got that way. We laugh, for what is a suicide note But the epitaph of an emotion? Few of us die out in the open; And when you say thesis, I say antithesis, But we don’t stop there: we take our opposing ideas, Plant them on opposing cliffs and then build a footbridge Between them, seemingly flimsy yet sturdy enough in fact To support a battalion. Hidden behind trees, we watch The soldiers march across it, single file, too scared To look down. We cheer them all, all except the boy In the fairy tale who knew no fear. Him we pity. He laughs open-eyed, ready to die as we were not. He is one of us, all right, but better, stronger, stranger. He asks for more fear than anyone can bear. II. The guilty had three choices: awkward chords of candor, Canned laughter, or the wild hyacinth’s sutra, before Silence returned triumphant, and the journey resumed In darkness, though the sky above was classically blue. Everyone kept his opinion to himself As harmony dictated, and effigies of Tristan and Isolde Accompanied their stubborn footsteps across the wild Terrain. Yet the longing for a loud catharsis At night renewed their pain. “If only we could climb Out of these clouds and heartfelt headaches, Like ravished children in the glory of a snowball fight After school, and never again have to descend, Who would not abandon these erotic shipwrecks And fall asleep like tigers in the destined heights?” III. At a festival of conceptual art in Cairo, I saw a tank buried entirely in snow. I knew then that silence is the source Of all music, all laughter, all thought, and so I stuffed pebbles in my mouth and stood by the sea And roared my defiance of the waves. It was here, Years before, that our plane and its shadow Converged: I ran from the fire, carrying the flames In my arms. I ran and ran, feeling like a man Fighting a newspaper on a windy beach, but it wasn’t A beach at all: the sand beneath me was snow, Is snow, and the spears in the desert sky look like stars. In the pyramid’s triangular shadow, I was the man Who heard the crimson explosion, and ran. And ran. IV. Keats in one of his letters says, “My Imagination Is a Monastery and I am its Monk.” I wonder. If a man’s imagination is his monastery, This place looks a lot like an empty railway station, King’s Cross in London or the Gare St. Lazare in Paris, A place whose smoke and fog Monet dissolved Into a chorus of colors. There we stood, my love and I, Having made our vows under the suspended clock, Hero and bride. But as we walked away, side by side, Down the station’s sunless nave, amid the excitement Of the crowd, and foreign languages spoken loud, We knew our exile had already begun, could hear The conductor’s shrill whistle, could see the light At the end of the tunnel, where the battlefields begin. V. Paradise was hardly what Psyche With her bleeding blackberries and nervous orgasms Could have foretold, enjoyed, And renounced for the sake of some querulous abstraction Designed to keep us unhappy but alive. Call it civilization. Call our disobedience instinctive. Or say we obeyed an angry muse, who ordered us to dance. “Or else?” I asked. She sighed before answering. “Or else a dismal armchair will be your lot With chamber music your sole narcotic—music that will make You face your former self, and grieve over incidents Scarcely recalled, and eat without pleasure, and drink Without thirst, and dread what shall never come to pass.” In the revelation of our nakedness, we danced. VI. “A ball that is caught is fuller, by the weight Of its return, than the same ball thrown.” Our empty hands say so. We feel free. In the other room the true believers remain, The ones who insist that evil is real, the only real thing. Cannibals and missionaries they are, accomplices in sin, Greedy for punishment, to inflict or endure it. We are glad to leave them behind, glad not to have to hear Their chants and wails. Down the elevator we go And out into the canyon created by skyscraper shadows. Yet even we, dedicated as we are to good living, Sometimes walk around with a lost look on our faces, As if the blessing for a piece of fruit or cup of wine Had suddenly come to mind, though cup and plate are empty; Had come to mind and faded almost instantly away. VII. Admit it: you used to walk around thinking there had To be a reason for things, for everything. That way Paranoia lies. Not a science of syllables, the solitude Total, but the prophet’s lit lantern was what you wanted— And what you got was “neon in daylight,” a pleasure Recommended by Frank O’Hara. Those pleasures meant a lot to you, You even thought you lived for them, until the first death (A nervous uncle broke the news when you landed at Kennedy) And the first marriage (you stayed up all night and read Beyond the Pleasure Principle, a fair description Of your lovemaking). It seems that new myths are needed And consumed all the time by folks like you. Each erases the last, Producing tomorrow’s tabula rasa, after a night of dreams In which the tigers of wrath become the tigers of repose. VIII. Go back to the beginning, to the first fist fight. They played for high stakes those days. The penalty for losing Was death or slavery, take your pick. To spare a life Was the mark of the master; the mark of his slave Was fear. Noble savage, nothing. Forget about paradise. My vote goes to Hobbes’s “life of man, solitary, poor, Nasty, brutish, and short.” An amazing sentence: The syllable that ends it also lends it its poignancy, Since we go on wanting what we can scarcely bear. Go back, go back, back to when god became a swan With beautiful wounded wings, and raped the astonished maiden. Back to the dream that stays real when you wake up, Accustomed to your hunger and clinging to it, Like a panther accustomed to his cage. Go back. IX. A slap in the face, and the face burns with shame. Anger comes later, comes stranger, looking for someone to blame. End of message. Can’t see the stars; Can’t say anything that hasn’t been said before By somebody slamming the door; can only repeat The syntax that brought the crowd to its feet In the silence that appeased the nightingale. End of tale. But its moral was simple: I lost the hearing in one of my ears And listened with the other to a deaf man’s Symphony. He built a heaven out of his fears That there wasn’t one. End of nightmare. —The imperfect past, going by too fast, Begged us to collect it. It couldn’t last. X. The doctor put his cards on the table. “Take your pick,” he said. He was able To offer me fear of extinction or fear of pain, Though freedom from neither. “You mustn’t complain.” In the vertiginous air, the monks wore masks To keep their germs to themselves and their Identities a secret. A hero to his own valet, The Sultan choreographed his murderous ballet Until Scheherazade, entering the circus tent With John the Baptist’s head on a silver tray, Told her tale and made the crowd repent. The curtain dropped and the crowd went on its way, But no one could say what the nightmare meant, Or why it was sent to us, or by whom it was sent. XI. You can’t have it, so you want it, or You couldn’t have it, so you no longer want it, or You’re stuck with it, forever. It was designed with you in mind, Like the locked door that swung open majestically when you Spoke the magic words or just answered in the affirmative when Your name was called. “Here I am, ready to meet you, Ready to make any sacrifice,” you said, Still in bed, wrestling with an evil angel In your sleep. You were seventeen years old then And woke up with a limp. Desire is like that: The girl knows what you want and cries when She gives it to you because it was yours because She whispered your name in your sleeping ear And said: “Here I am.” And was gone a minute later. XII. I met her in one of those sleazebag bars— I think it was called The Bottom Line—in Buffalo, Self-proclaimed “city of no illusions,” where Silent men in shirtsleeves sit on bar stools and watch Girls with tattoos on their buttocks strip Down to g-strings and panties. They dance to the thump Of moronic music, grind and hump under hot strobe lights, And then, when the act is over, circulate among the scumbags, Gyrating in front of each in turn, making each feel special, And each, aroused by the mingled smell of musk and sweat, Folds a dollar and sticks it into her crotch for a tip. She was different. When I left the bar that night I knew She would follow, and she did, and I never looked back, never Glanced at the rear-view mirror. All other women turned into her. XIII. Her name was Mary but was Miriam before that and soon She will change it to Alice. What she offered was a shadow The shape of Europe on the map above the bed of my youth. Her shawl is all that remains of Europe in the downstairs closet. It was forbidden to lift up her skirt and look, look. Yet boys and girls danced across the bridal morning like a bridge As the wings of the fog like white sails lingered Across the bay. I flew, like a caterpillar with wings, into a new day. That was the day we buried Europe. We built a dome in air And in the icy silence of the tomb. To hang like a spider On a subway strap seemed a suitable fate for some, but we Lit a candle and watched it cast the shadow of a mountain In a valley. It was the awful shadow of some unseen power, A heaven in a wild flower. Europe, bloody Europe was gone. XIV. In the dream of your choice, you wake up In the Garden of Eden, alone except for a whore with a heart, Wearing a nurse’s uniform. The serpent says: Listen carefully. This is for your own good. At the tone it will be eight o’clock. Nine out of ten physicians recommend That you surround yourself with the kind of sorrows That can be instantly relieved by frivolous kisses, With vegetables as lush as fruits Ripening in your hands. When the hospital gates are opened, Don’t hesitate, run! And when you arrive at last in the land Of the free, take your place in line with all of the others As though nothing had happened between then and now To make you doubt the conviction that you’re blessed. XV. If you were a painter, you’d paint the wind Green. It would shake the boughs of the honey locust trees. It would chase the leaves across the continent. It would scatter their crumbs in a twist of swirling snow. It would be colorless and green at the same time, The wind that aligns the pond and the cloud, The wind that is everywhere, in constant motion, As buoyant as Ariel and as scornful of gross Caliban, The wind that holds up the fly ball, drives it back Into fair territory, causes it to drift within reach Of the right-fielder, who waves off the second baseman, Until a last gust lifts the ball over both their heads And it lands safely for the double that ends the game In extra innings, costing our team the pennant. XVI. After the flood, refreshed, was the first time You realized that the road to truth was the road Of flagrant fiction. You surrounded yourself With symbols (a mountain, a window, an ark, A rainbow) and mythic creatures (the dove that returned And the raven that didn’t). You understood the dream Of the old woman who interpreted the sailor’s dream. Then came the other birds, the clouds that come When the rain is done, and the wind that signals The discovery of dry land, a new continent, As the report of a gun sounds the start of the race, As the bottle broken beneath the bridegroom’s foot Begins the marriage, as church bells start the funeral Parade and all the townspeople march in the procession. XVII. No longer is there freedom in confusion, Nor forgiveness in confession, Nor charm in the old illusion Of moonlight, the tower, the howling dog, the escaping lovers, Escaping into midnight in the Western hemisphere, When the possibilities of expansion still seemed limitless And the soul could choose among stars without number In the vast velvet night without end. —In the midst of other woe than ours, I went to the window And cured the solitude of the listeners outside Who shivered in the rain, waiting for the police to come And ambulance sirens to sound. Drunk I was when I went to the bathroom, looked in the mirror, and said, “Dad, Dad, is that you?” In the terror of the night. XVIII. “Wherever you follow,” he said, “I will lead.” Where summer met fall, she picked up a brittle orange leaf. He wanted to lie on the grass, to lean and loaf At his ease, but the crisis intervened: news of her unpaid loan Prompted him to put his sandals on his head, as in the Zen koan. Slowly he walked away. Silence followed, then the sound of a moan In the room next door. So orange it seemed a painted moon Shone against the indigo sky. And quickly her mood Went from unreasonable euphoria to realistic dejection, as the wood In the fireplace turned to ash without first yielding a flame. The wool Of their sweaters had begun to unravel. “If the fool Persists in his folly,“ someone said, “he will have food Enough to eat, loaves and fishes galore. Worship the good, Which is beautiful though untrue. Turn your back on gold.” XIX. If we were painters we’d favor vibrant stripes, Primary colors, flat surfaces, a lot of white Remaining on the canvas. If we were composers We’d take the music of exotic jungles with us When we visit the vast vacant tundra. “If I were Rich enough,” vowed the philanthropist, “I’d move To a magnolia mansion and spend my days Translating modern literature into ancient Greek.” Great plans, distant vistas, a rearguard action To sabotage the present—and here we’ve all assembled, At the antiseptic airport, with haunted looks on our faces. Occasional eye contact between man with tan and woman in white. “You look like your voice,” she says, breaking the silence. The rest of us know where we’re going, but we don’t know when. XX. They’ve cornered the market on moral outrage. Yes, they have. The more noise they make about it, the more nervous we get. They’re always telling us just how shallow we are. The only convictions we have, they say, are on our driver’s licenses. The charge is not entirely fair to us, though it has its grain of truth. We tend to luxuriate in our indecisiveness. Not they. No one can say They lack conviction and passion and certitude. We have our doubts, Which make us less glamorous and give us The haunted look we wear. But something in defense Of our bemused spectatorship must be said: at least it spares us The postures of those hypocrite lechers, brothers and others Who sublimate their sexuality into opulent rhetoric and chide us For not doing the same. They have our best interests at heart. They may even be happier than we are. We have our doubts. XXI. Today’s graffiti is in the sky: “More than meets the eye.” Growing up I could tell the months by their smell. First come the fruitstand smells of spring in the city, Then the backyard trees get back their green, and we know It’s the real thing. Poetry is this puzzle of missing parts Is best represented by clouds in the early evening sky, Because they constantly change shape, are utterly indifferent To us, and seem both remote and near at hand At once. The creation of the world is a ballet With the dancers and music missing: what you see Is a miniature stage-set in a museum display case, And then suddenly you are walking in it, along the Boulevard Raspail, Until the Eiffel Tower comes into view. Watch it organize The bridges of the Seine into a coherent surprise. XXII. Love accompanies the stranger to his streetlamp Encircled by signing insects. The song he hears Meant doom or wax in the mariners’ ears. And now, as the smell of fresh cut grass gives way to the smell Of brown leaves burning, I want to tell You what I heard that night, and how the day Erased it: I woke to the rattle of a passing car Which, accelerating up the rapidly rising ramp, Seemed delighted with its capacity for making noise. From far away I could hear it coming. And just as we know that fame isn’t all It’s cracked up to be, that it can be downright Nasty in fact, and yet we want it anyway, So I, too, knew I belonged in one of those cars, tall Behind the steering wheel, racing to meet the changing light. XXIII. Winter came last. Waves of snow from who knows which wind Turned the meadow beside the frozen waterfall Into an ocean. The boy in the fairy tale who knew no fear Soon learned. On the shore of the wide world he could hear The violins of anger, spelling danger. Poetry in this era of disbelief Meant staring at a leaf until it turned into a star. It was easier in the past. All you had to do was sleep outside And let nature take over. There were more stars in the sky Than we had room for in our philosophy. And when we woke, Berries grew beside the burbling brook and bled in our soft hands. The question was not how like the gods we were But whether we could recognize them in our sleep And remember what we had seen, remember them clearly, When the radio alarm welcomes us into its next musical day. XXIV. I live in a boat in front of the door Depicting the gods as they might have been forgotten By Lazarus during the tortures of interrogation. What I see are tombs and yellow stains on the snow. Instead of quotations, I will refer to my heart, Instead of an altar, I will guard the munitions And drink wine with the sour taste of cork And eat sour strawberries in the city of New York. You who’ve been looking for a lost address, And mothers who seem to be fighting back their tears, What made you think you could resist the roar Of the years as they echo in a cavernous subway station? Can you see the boat in front of the door? What was it you forgot during the interrogation? XXV. Ovid had it wrong. The plight of the frightened maiden Gliding noiselessly into the woods, like a deer whose eyes Had been mesmerized by headlights on a cold November night, Was implausible without the contrivance of arrows: love’s dart Claimed Apollo while the dart of fear pierced Daphne’s heart, And so she ran, deeper and deeper into the woods, losing ground All the while to Apollo (for love moved faster than fear), Until the gods, granting her wish, turned the nymph Into a laurel, which Apollo hopelessly embraced. Poetic justice? Yes, except it didn’t happen that way. Their foot race ended In a forest clearing, where Daphne, exhausted but unashamed, Made Apollo watch her undress. He entered her At her request, as if his will were an extension of her own. The trees, inclining their branches, nodded in consent. Love won. XXVI. The boy, who was more eager than his father To live on a raft, sleep in the woods, and study the stars, Became his father, but not before he hid in a cave, slept in it Overnight, and was saved by a spider from sure destruction. The king’s soldiers, hot on his trail, saw the web stretch unbroken In the mouth of the cave, and assumed that no one was there. What is the correct interpretation of the spider’s web? To the soldiers it meant desolation; to the spider, conquest; To the grandfather telling the tale, providence. The boy Sees the dew cling to the web at dawn. The natural camouflage Of rabbits and snakes isn’t lost on him. He notices The triangle formed by three birds in the bare-branched sycamore. He can hear the hum of a bee admiring a tulip’s genitalia. And at night, he knows, all the colors are present in the white of the stars. XXVII. That was the year I first read H ö lderlin. The evening fell more slowly and the first day of spring Arrived more suddenly and stayed lovelier longer. Boys pursued muses and girls impersonated them. With the instinct of insects, He and She on the meadow Mate. What they dreamed stays real when they wake up In the evening of the first day of spring. Did they fall out of paradise or were they pushed? It’s unclear, but we next see them enter the gathering dusk, Hand in hand, and the camera pulls back and the voiceover says, “Good fortune is even harder to bear Than the bad fortune that came first. Remember this About the gods: their own immortality suffices them. The source of all rivers is a riddle even I cannot solve.” XXVIII. How little I have changed since then, or how much Of the change is in the eyes of the beholder Of a book I lived rather than wrote, whose author Seems like a stranger to me today. I remember, For example, wanting to write an apocalyptic parody Of Milton, in Milton’s high style, titled “Eden in Flames.” Adam and Eve celebrated their carnality, and when they woke, The branches of the fruit trees curved gracefully down And served them nectar. I couldn’t bring myself to describe Their banishment, and so the project failed. Yet what I heard When I slept sounded a lot like the chorus of joy In Beethoven’s Ninth, and what I saw when I woke up, If only for the length of a dream, was a deer, Eyes mesmerized by headlights, motionless in the middle of the road. XXIX. You could be the only passenger on the bus Who notices that the driver is blind. I, by contrast, Have eyes only for lovely you. Give me your hand. I will kiss it. You are cordially invited to my studio, Which resembles a psychiatrist’s office. Once there, I put on my glasses, Read passages out loud from Plato, Hobbes, Marx, and Freud, And ask you for your opinion of each. Together we analyze Solitude. There is a meeting of the minds, And sex follows. It’s the first day of spring and we want To walk along the river and roll on the grass and take off Our clothes while leaving the windows wide open. In fact, We can’t wait to get off this bus, which seems to be going Nowhere fast, as Spring puts her tongue in my ear And names the forbidden parts of her body. XXX. No one could say what the nightmare meant In the operating theater or the circus tent. And none of this will help us pay the rent: Many are called and sleep through the ringing, But we know it’s spring, though we’ve thrown our watches away. Our dreams, stretching across the chasm of day. Don’t deter us from waking, jumping into our clothes, Dancing down the avenue, and swinging through The revolving doors of the future, where we used to live, The day before yesterday, when we weren’t dying. —The question is whether the raven will return After his end-of-the-world adventures, after the storm When one by one the masks slip off, and the bride embraces The guilty son: true to the test, remembered and confessed.

For it was the first day of Rosh Ha'shanah, New Year's Day, day of remembrance, of ancient sacrifices and averted calamities. For I started the day by eating an apple dipped in honey, as ritual required. For I went to the local synagogue to listen to the ram's horn blown. For I asked Our Father, Our King, to save us for his sake if not for ours, for the sake of his abundant mercies, for the sake of his right hand, for the sake of those who went through fire and water for the sanctification of his name. For despite the use of a microphone and other gross violations of ceremony, I gave myself up gladly to the synagogue's sensual insatiable vast womb. For what right have I to feel offended? For I communed with my dead father, and a conspicuous tear rolled down my right cheek, and there was loud crying inside me. For I understood how that tear could become an orb. For the Hebrew melodies comforted me. For I lost my voice. For I met a friend who asked "is this a day of high seriousness" and when I said yes he said "it has taken your voice away." For he was right, for I felt the strong lashes of the wind lashing me by the throat. For I thought there shall come a day that the watchmen upon the hills of Ephraim shall cry, Arise and let us go up to Zion unto the Lord our God. For the virgin shall rejoice in the dance, and the young and old in each other's arms, and their soul shall be as a watered garden, and neither shall they learn war any more. For God shall lower the price of bread and corn and wine and oil, he shall let our cry come up to him. For it is customary on the first day of Rosh Ha'shanah to cast a stone into the depths of the sea, to weep and pray to weep no more. For the stone represents all the sins of the people. For I asked you and Molly to accompany me to Cascadilla Creek, there being no ocean nearby. For we talked about the Psalms of David along the way, and the story of Hannah, mother of Samuel, who sought the most robust bard to remedy her barrenness. For Isaac said "I see the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the offering?" For as soon as I saw the stone, white flat oblong and heavy, I knew that it had summoned me. For I heard the voice locked inside that stone, for I pictured a dry wilderness in which, with a wave of my staff, I could command sweet waters to flow forth from that stone. For I cast the stone into the stream and watched it sink to the bottom where dozens of smaller stones, all of them black, gathered around it. For the waterfall performed the function of the chorus. For after the moment of solemnity dissolved, you playfully tossed Molly into the stream. For you tossed her three times, and three times she swam back for her life. For she shook the water off her body, refreshed. For you removed the leash from her neck and let her roam freely. For she darted off into the brush and speared a small gray moving thing in the neck. For this was the work of an instant. For we looked and behold! the small gray thing was a rat. For Molly had killed the rat with a single efficient bite, in conformance with Jewish law. For I took the rat and cast him into the stream, and both of us congratulated Molly. For now she resumed her noble gait. For she does not lie awake in the dark and weep for her sins, and whine about her condition, and discuss her duty to God. For I'd as lief pray with your dog Molly as with any man. For she knows that God is her savior.

Can't swim; uses credit cards and pills to combat intolerable feelings of inadequacy; Won't admit his dread of boredom, chief impulse behind               numerous marital infidelities; Looks fat in jeans, mouths clichés with confidence,               breaks mother's plates in fights; Buys when the market is too high, and panics during               the inevitable descent; Still, Pop can always tell the subtle difference               between Pepsi and Coke, Has defined the darkness of red at dawn, memorized               the splash of poppies along Deserted railway tracks, and opposed the war in Vietnam               months before the students, Years before the politicians and press; give him               a minute with a road map And he will solve the mystery of bloodshot eyes;               transport him to mountaintop And watch him calculate the heaviness and height               of the local heavens; Needs no prompting to give money to his kids; speaks               French fluently, and tourist German; Sings Schubert in the shower; plays pinball in Paris;               knows the new maid steals, and forgives her.

I. TO THE FATES They cannot keep the peace or their hands off each other, breed not yet preach the old discredited creed. Love is charity conceived as a coin dropped in a beggar’s cup. Reason not the need. Gluttony is no nicer than greed or wrath, but lust is our categorical must. We have no choice but to breed. II. OLYMPIA Olympia lies on her couch with an insolent stare, her hand hiding her crotch, a flower in her hair. She splits the lot of us with a sneer: we are either breeders or queer. We will fight wars because of her. She will root us on. We will win. The face in the mirror is not brave, but we crave contact with her skin and the jewel in the mouth of her cave. She tempts like a sin and under her spell we fall into a deep enchanted sleep, and wake up ready to make the leap, ready to heed her call, only now we’re alone, on streets less friendly than wilderness, a platoon of ex-pals in Manhattan. Olympia tempts like a sin, but then sends us home to the wife, commands us to resume the life we had planned to give up in her honor: the life of a dutiful husband, a modest success in his profession, impressive in credentials, in mood depressive (but nothing that a pill won’t cure). You ask if he is happy? “Sure.” And Olympia lies on her couch, with her insolent stare, her hand hiding her crotch, a flower in her hair.