Fragment of a Pastoral

Here might we live in... not quite peace, but relative

obscurity. Trees and mountains: this is metonomy.

I loved

Brooklyn

on your behalf, but was it what we dreamed of under the

air-vents

of August nights, in summer's tired plunge toward a red

dawn?

It was all we could do to take "taking seriously"

seriously: eyeglasses, eggs, the Times, rhubarb, rhubarb,

peas and carrots, hail Caesar, ciphers for the endless

adulthood of Sunday breakfast, products of who knows

whose fancy?

To understand those moments, to sort them justly, I

can't believe

we thought it possible. Like trying to live

on Benzedrene and Life Savers, you just can't,

eventually.

So this: a partial remedy for the quandary we

argued

over cups and cups of coffee, perhaps worse than no

remedy,

but who will be the wiser? Only we must become small

enough

to live in this broken world...