An autumn evening in the modest squareof a small town proud to have made the atlas(some frenzy drove that poor mapmaker witless,or else he had the daughter of the mayor).
Here Space appears unnerved by its own featsand glad to drop the burden of its greatness--to shrink to the dimensions of Main Street;and Time, chilled to its bone, stares at the clockfaceabove the general store, whose crowded shelveshold every item that this world produces,from fancy amateur stargazers' tel-escopes to common pins for common uses.
A movie theater, a few saloons,around the bend a café with drawn shutters,a red-brick bank topped with spread-eagle plumes,a church, whose net--to fish for men--now fluttersunfilled, and which would be paid little heed,except that it stands next to the post office.And if parishioners should cease to breed,the pastor would start christening their autos.
Grasshoppers, in silence, run amok.By 6 p.m. the city streets are empty,unpeopled as if by a nuclear strike.Just surfacing, the moon swims to the centerof this black window square, like some Eccles-iastes, glowering; while on the lonelyhighway, from time to time, a Buick beamsits blinding headlights at the Unknown Soldier.
The dreams you dream are not of girls half nudebut of your name on an arriving letter.A morning milkman, seeing milk that's soured,will be the first to guess that you have died here.Here you can live, ignoring calendars,gulp Bromo, never leave the house; just settleand stare at your reflection in the glass,as streetlamps stare at theirs in shrinking puddles.
