The Eater of Darkness

To R.M.C.

Dipping an adroit hand into his hat, he found excessively a

patent razor, gin, a banjo-ukulele

five cigar bands, 3-in-1, a jackknife with broken blades, a

portable bathtub and a Sunday Times, as well as freckles, Matisse,

red hair, a blue airplane and a white rabbit.

The last he gave to the White Queen, who ran away.

The red-haired man burst into genuine tears, they did not

change to pearls. He went to a dance in Harlem. Holding a

toy pistol bang to his head, he crumpled boom to the floor,

in time with Duke Ellington's umpah-umpah.

It was what everybody expected. That year everybody was

being baroque and outrageous, with a false hint of sadness

underneath. The parties were wonderful, and nobody believed

in them any more

But the bullets were real and the death was real, I couldn't get

over it.