NYCHTHEMERON [1]

I. Thus he lived and sojourned among us, and as he lived so he died

A hot, sultry Washington morning

   She loosened my tie, but I opened my suit jacket myself—  

      Those sons of bitches are killing me

Shoots from the hip, misses the target

They beat me exceedingly, threw me down, and turned me over a hedge,

afterwards dragged me through a house into the street, stoning and beating

me, so that I was all over besmeared with blood and dirt

It repels him to do these horrible things, but they’ve got to be done.

*

Never in history a more sensational investigation started by a less impressive witness;

   his main stock in trade is he’s a master of disguise. [2]

Over the dark Atlantic, stewards and stewardesses plied him with fine viands

   I had a strange dream last night:

       I saw things which cannot be uttered

He pressed a concealed button and the cartridge began to turn

I could visualize my naked, beaten body collapse and sink into a mire of bottomless ooze.

Then I spoke to the people from the graveyard.

Among his followers were those whose sole function was to maintain his peace of mind.

*

Therefore what the man does God does.

Standing there in their expensive, well-made business suits, wearing rubber gloves,

        shouting “Don’t shoot.” The police came in.

The infinite can be reached by wiping out all marks of the finite [3]

    As I age, I find my life increasingly disordered;

        The constables gave me some blows over my back with their willow rods.

He talked about the whimpering, simpering weaklings at the university:

          Oh the blows, punchings, beatings that we underwent!

Survivors all, unreasoning.

*

They should not have bugged the candidate’s plane.  The beer was a false friend.

 
   Because I would not drink with them, they struck me with their clubs—

      I was moved to cry against all sorts of music

   History shows that Truth has generally appeared first among a small minority.

     Goddamn people around here won’t read anything.

   The sound of my door closing on the day’s last client

       was louder than a detonating grenade.

          The back of my neck began to feel cold.

There are two things and each is bad. One is to lie and the other is to cover up.

II. After the narrative of an attempt to push him over the cliffs the account continues

Here is what happened.

The singer sang. It seemed as though her ode was to Darkness,

     telling of time before man [4]

          Stop. My liberal friends don’t love me anymore. Stop.

Crisis, by its nature, is usually personal—

         Just, whatever it is, slice it off

      I lost interest in eating and skipped meals without even being aware of it.

            Jolly well bullshit and all that sort of thing.

She freed one arm and unhooked the back of her scarlet dress

        At the sight of the woman eating he began to salivate unwittingly

The ability to be cool, confident, and decisive is not inherited.

*

Dangers surrounded a lone agent operating in a foreign milieu:

           kidnapping, providing prostitutes, uh, to weaken the opposition

We sat on some dilapidated rocking chairs on his front porch overlooking the

         rolling countryside.

                  He replaced the pumpkin in its original place in the patch.

                  They brought dog-whips and horse-whips, threatening to whip me.

                              They put me in a nasty, stinking prison.

As he took most delight in sheep, so he was very skillful in them;

       he pressed the pocket of his coat and felt the crackle of documents.

          Well, I didn’t, but he did, and so on and so on and so on

                   We are caught in a tragedy of history.

An unsuccessful attempt at suicide that same night.

*

The danger of throwing any baby to the wolves is you always just make

       the wolves more hungry

     Looking back, I can understand how he must have felt. His career

           was gone. His reputation was ruined. His wife and children

           had been humiliated.

The cushion hurtled into the pistol, deflecting it, then into the man’s face. [5]

Fangs of flame shot from under the bed and an ear-splitting detonation hurled him

      against the wall.

                         Mind the light. God is not far off. He needs no vicar.

              I saw something—an awareness of light rather than light itself.

Unfortunate that there were so few television sets.

*

Death reigned from Adam to Moses.

   See these are very moral men. They don’t drink, they don’t smoke,

       they don’t screw around, they love their families

             They haled me out, and stoned me.

He answered in a voice full of despair and resignation,

       like Lady Macbeth, saying, in effect, “Out, damned spot!”

Those who fail are those who are overcome. Keep to yea and nay in all things.

                                                I was struck even blind, that I could not see. [6]

Oh, the incredible treachery of that son of a bitch. This damn thing is a chicken shit thing.

      All his poise gone now.  The burden of the presidency,

               the, the awful loneliness.

Hope you liked “God Bless America” at the end.

[1] Sources: Abuse of Power, edited by Kutler; The Coven and Return to Vorkuta, by David St. John; and Six Crises of Richard M. Nixon; The Journal of George Fox; miscellaneous pamphlets on Quakerism.

[2] I am also fond of birds.

[3] It is as lawful to baptize a cat, a dog, or a chicken as to baptize an infant. 

[4] Again, the story was almost too fantastic to believe.

[5] I asked if he had had any work done on his teeth.

[6] I should have been elated. The case was broken.