TO THE DOCTOR OF BREATHTAKING ELEGANCE

42. TO THE DOCTOR OF BREATHTAKING ELEGANCE:

They made you partake of something you didn't understand or share feelings for they made you a parfait of the elements of swank - in their thinking - while you were used to gnawing on tar they underscored your alignment with rightness by saddling you with depth and meaning unlike the reality you brushed through they made you listen to the noises of steam in a carriage-house of dread while you were used to fast light at the edges of travel - places where things compress and draw back into themselves and solidify and gain mass before disappearing BUT 'once the orphan always the waif' as the Sisters of Mercy said so you went along not willingly but along nonetheless and they threw marbles back at your face and the sting-marks of rebuke left small welts not yet healed and your place at their table was taken over by a bear who did tricks for a master and the dances of wizards seemed broken by the factory-light of some pale yellow fire and the death-defying gorge from which some sacred river roared seemed deeper and rockier than ever before but the highlands - you knew - always have lakes which then drain to the lowlands and that was the one noise you heard - the thrush of the minions of three-thousand sickening faces looking up the swamp of iniquity where the piled-up people built their villages and towns - fens of diversion malodorous buckets of scum swamps and perverted valleys with hangmen seeking trees for a noose to be placed on perfect fat limbs : there was no succor nor solace in what was left after any of this but you withstood it all nonetheless.