I am forced to sleepwalk much of the time.

We hold on to these old ways, are troubled

sometimes and then the geyser goes away,

time gutted. In and of itself there is

no great roar, force pitted against force that

makes up in time what it loses in speed.

The waterfalls, the canyon, a royal I-told-you-so

comes back to greet us at the beginning.

How was your trip? Oh I didn’t last

you see, folded over like the margin

of a dream of the thing-in-itself. Well, and

what have we come to? A paper-thin past,

just so, and ’tis pity. We regurgitate

old anthems and what has come to pass, and why

dwell on these. Why make things more difficult

than they already are? Because if it’s boring

in a different way, that’ll be interesting too.

That’s what I say.

That rascal, he jumped over the fence.

I’m wiping my pince-nez now. Did you ever hear from

the one who said he’d be back once it was over,

who eluded me even in my sleep? That was a particularly

promising time, we thought. Now the sun’s out

and it’s raining again. Just like a day from

the compendium. I’ll vouch for you,

and we can go on scrolling as though nothing had risen,

the horizon forest looks back at us. The preacher

shook his head, the evangelist balanced two spools

at the end of his little makeshift rope. We’d gone too far.

We’d have to come back in a day or so.