Thursday, October 9, 2008

33. IN COUNTING FICTIONS

IN COUNTING FICTIONS
I wasn't there for the beginning - when I arrived the hero was
already dead. A pool of blood and some red rags were all
that were left. The place stunk.
It wasn't as if I'd expected anything different. We'd run the
wind to the crest and valiantly tried stopping the flow.
The girl with the red boot-laces had already tied up the
satchel in twine. I always thought she was pretty, though
no one else had ever mentioned it. 'Satisfaction guaranteed' -
I considered - would have been a good motto for her.
I sat around reading Ashbery poems and Larkin too.
Something from like 1964. The Whitsun Weddings,
I think. In them, solace had no source and whatever
had been meant to move you moved you.
It was all pretty simple.
As he once had said, in a cartoon of two
women drawn as heads: 'My dear, if that's
the Civil Service, give me plain bad manners.'

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