About the age of twenty, when the first hairfallsignals that nature is finished with the organismand we just begin to conceive the use of women(having been all this timemore enamored of the fountain than the cistern),we retire to nursing homes,whether they be kaleidoscopic gardensaimed like a blunderbuss of hermeticism at our neighbors,or a desperate dream safari through old Zambesi,where the suicidal waves of angry nativesgive the illusion that we are advancing rapidly,or the crow's-nest of this windless office blockwhere the cook is already boiling the last sail.
And sitting on the bench like a snowfall of beardexpectorated by a cloudy hat,we consider the byproducts of life,such as (to name only the least offensive to the nose)the body itself when it has finally reachedthat eminence from which all is visibleand from which it nonetheless feels the need to move onto a homestead of its dreams like an abandoned chicken coopon the sandy streamside under the tulip poplars,and to words, which result from an instinctfor what is impossible:to soften the blow for others, including ourselves.
