Robert Lee Space

The Whole Story

How it should happen this way
I am not sure, but you
Are sitting next to me,
Minding your own business
When all of a sudden I see
A fire out the window.

I nudge you and say,
“That’s a fire. And what’s more,
We can’t do anything about it,
Because we’re on this train, see?”
You give me an odd look
As though I had said too much.

But for all you know I may
Have a passion for fires,
And travel by train to keep
From having to put them out.
It may be that trains
Can kindle a love of fire.

I might even suspect
That you are a fireman
In disguise. And then again
I might be wrong. Maybe
You are the one
Who loves a good fire. Who knows?

Perhaps you are elsewhere,
Deciding that with no place
To go you should not
Take a train. And I,
Seeing my own face in the window,
May have lied about the fire.

A perfect ending, for the class, for the scholar, and for an entire career devoted to noble deceits.

And that's the whole story.

The clown.
in the Comedy.

"Treatment? --Go watch a comic play by Moliere."
"I am Moliere."

Not a light-hearted joke.

I didn't expect so many others share the same habit. Great minds think alike. F.L. certainly made a point.

Perhaps it's the right time to talk to her. Like two and half years ago.

Perhaps it's the time to think it through...did F.L. make that point? K. certainly did not.

The first dream bang
At the top of the Tower
Last fall.
A windfall game at Princeton echoed
The bitter-sweet Dutch folk
The Little Lady in the Rain.

The second--out loud
Fulfilled tonight
One full year of disgrace
One second of redemption

With little regrets
Halfway there
The crouching and crawling and
The numerous Seattles and Verne's Eighteens suddenly
Seemed so amusing

And the last Trial, the big G, in America
Dragging mysterious gravity around
The monster's Castle is
Halfway there
Pray for the spotless mind
E.Y's clipper is
Coming back to the Port of Venezia
In time.

For years I've been asking myself, "What do I want?"
For years the answer remains "Res Gestae."

Sober, serene, calm, emotionless, and decisive,
The rock breaks the waves of neon lights.

For years I've been asking myself, "What am I looking for?"
For years the answer remains "The Leap."

The storm gathering itself at the fringe of the twisted sky,
The torrent of fear and trembling, brewing and burning, in the deep cold water.

For years I've been asking myself, "What's the Rosebud?"
For years the answer remains "Peace within," uttered in an ancient Indian language.

A Game of Chess
You hear those two in Stefan Z
Check! Check! Check! ...Tora! Tora! Tora!...
And then the long pause.

For years I've been pushing those questions,
Digesting every single page of the gloomy journey of Aeneas,
Chewing those answers,
Bite them up, and spit them out.

And I look at that young marble statue; his lips locked, his glow dimmed,
Reconstructing the same ocean, quiet, silky, dangerously golden,
Where T.E.L and E.R. once fought and fell,
And I tell myself,
The trip to Parthia is now canceled.
The direction now turns to Rome.

And all roads lead to Rome,
And the Road leads to Rome.

i.e. this is the easy part, in fact. Frustrating, yet at the same time, cheerful and refreshing.

Indeed.

They got tons of blocks and timbers and hammers and a good weather. Too much good weather, perhaps, and Katrina swings by all the time.

They got M16s with silencers and artillery cover and air support. Yet radio signals drop, and Blackhawks down.

I come out of scratch. I build up from nothing. I have nothing to lose but chains. I am so ready to lose them.