How the demons sang joyously, she staring at me, me staring back.

The Sun's eye had a sickly glare,

the Earth with age was wan,

the skeletons of nations were

around that lonely man!

Some had expir'd in fight--the brands

still rusted in their bony hands;

in plague and famine some!

Earth's cities had no sound nor tread;

and ships were drifting with dead

to shores where all was dumb!

Yet, prophet like, that lone one stood,

with dauntless words and high,

that shook the sere leaves from the wood

as if a storm pass'd by,

saying, we are twins in death, proud Sun,

thy face is cold, they race is run,

'Tis Mercy bids thee go.

For thou ten thousand thousand years

hast seen the tide of Human tears

that no longer shall flow.

-Thomas Campbell

I beheld a moment, staring into the sun, impertinence, high-cheek bones, a chorus belying the event: a din of demons perhaps, heralding the event.

I rolled over and there was my fair one, lovely huge dark eyes and all, empty-headed lover of things mine.

And upon the stage, the poor player fretted, making a show of wrestling a rubber Anaconda, making it look damnably good, a thing to confuse even the most jaded, his flailing and falling about and fussing.

Are they all Marxists, Jim?  All but me and thee, you say?

How did that happen?  What paper was passed about between them all?

I was then over in the other hours, sitting for refreshment, of a four day drought I had known, to twist the bottle fiendishly for a snoot of the old, and the old sets all to rights, and me asked to sit out the courier service for one afternoon; Door Rash, and all, Goober Eats, and so forth, I sat out with a machined little bottle, and the small God whisper of my own machine, another din, it was, and then I had my din.

The dark'ning universe defy

to quench his Immortality,

or shake his trust in God!