765. LIVING BEYOND REPROACH

LIVING BEYOND REPROACH
('he spoke like a man of the world')
It was almost comical how he swallowed his
words - some sort of ersatz fragmented accent
from between France and Mars, with Benelux thrown
in too. He walked like Marlon Brando chasing flies.
Living beyond reproach is like that : one can't be too
careful about the ways and means.
-
The one time I visited Carpathia, I was stuffed
in a frozen carriage with three Gypsy souls.
We rode through the cold in a bevy of blankets -
chasing vampires and werewolves and ghouls.
There was (really) something special about
that place.
-
I'd been, of course, to Sofia already - the soft,
wayward city beyond this continental divide -
(I'd divided this part of Europe up for spoils
already, in my mind, just as if I was Stalin
and Roosevelt and Churchill combined), but
it was nothing like this. The Chancellery silver
shone, and the icicles of the morning, I was
told, had already been there forever. There
was nothing between their now and their then.
-
But, these are places today outside my control.
Living beyond reproach, as I must here do,
I can only watch from a distance. My own time,
sadly, slides slowly off its platter, and the only
gruel I get to eat are the words of surly masters.
'One can't be too careful about the ways and the
means'...I'll always remember him telling me
that. (He spoke like a man of the world).