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APUS
(…)
Apus, the Bird of Paradise, sixty-seventh in rank,
without a bright star or a meteor shower to its name.

Outside, the treetops tumbled and tossed, with a foamy whoosh like club soda bubbling up in the glass.

Her surprise seemed perfectly natural. The problem was that she was such an expert actress it was impossible to know if it was genuine.

(…) Julian did not allow many visitors. This was not so surprising as it sounds; he kept a gentle but firm distance between himself and his students; and though he was much more fond of us than teachers generally are of their pupils, it was not, even with Henry, a relationship of equals, and our classes with him ran more along the lines of benevolent dictatorship than democracy.

By that time, by some purely subconscious means, I had developed a successful mental block about the murder and everything pertaining to it. I talked about it in select company but seldom thought of it when alone.

This was something to the effect that, in the Underworld, a great ox costs only a penny, but I knew what he meant and in spite of myself I laughed. There was a tradition among the ancients that things were very cheap in Hell.

Tulips, I thought, staring at the jumble of letters before me. Had the ancient Greeks known them under a different name, if they’d had tulips at all? The letter psi, in Greek, is shaped like a tulip. All of a sudden, in the dense alphabet forest of the page, little black tulips began to pop up in a quick, random pattern like falling raindrops.

He was the picture of respectability except that his feet were bare. All of a sudden I found myself able to see him as the world saw him, as I myself had seen him when I first met him—cool, well-mannered, rich, absolutely beyond reproach. It was such a convincing illusion that even I, who knew the essential falseness of it, felt oddly comforted.

One likes to think there's something in it, that old platitude amor vincit omnia. But if I've learned one thing in my short sad life, it is that that particular platitude is a lie. Love doesn't conquer everything. And whoever thinks it does is a fool.

In retrospect, it is odd how little power the dead farmer exercised over an imagination as morbid and hysterical as my own.

(…) there is no doubt that Henry was so confident of his own abilities and position in the world, and so comfortable with them, that he had the strange effect of making others (including myself) feel comfortable in their respective, lesser positions, whatever they might happen to be.

Deprendi miserum est. [It is wretched to be caught.]

I think he did save me, though. And someplace, if there is a place where lists are kept, and credit given, I am sure there is a gold star by his name.

But even that day, there on the porch, with Charles beside me and the smell of wood smoke in the air, it had the quality of a memory; there it was, before my eyes, and yet too beautiful to believe.

At any rate, this was the weekend that things started to change, that the dark gaps between the street lamps begin to grow smaller, and smaller, and farther apart, the first sign that one’s train is approaching familiar territory, and will soon be passing through the well-known, well-lighted streets of town.

The chronological sorting of memories is an interesting business.

THE FOX ❤️

Standing its ground on the hill, as if it could hide
in its own stars, low down in the west of the sky.
I could hit it from here with a stone, put the torch
in the far back of its eyes. It's that close.

The next night, the dustbin sacked, the bin-bag
quartered for dog meat, biscuit and bone.
The night after that, six magpies lifting
from fox fur, smeared up ahead on the road.

I've known men who run down homosexuality because they are uncomfortable with it, perhaps harbor inclinations in that area; and I've known men who run down homosexuality and mean it.

COLUMBA
These X-rays prove what we probably knew, my lady,
my love. Namely, the heart is a muscle for pumping blood,
but there in the cage of your ribs is a dove, unsparingly
white, turning its head to this wavelength of light.

He was a marvelous talker, a magical talker, and I wish I were able to give a better idea what he said, but it is impossible for a mediocre intellect to render the speech of a superior one—especially after so many years—without losing a good deal in the translation.

If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s lying on my feet. It’s sort of a gift I have.

I do not now nor did I ever have anything in common with any of them, nothing except a knowledge of Greek and the year of my life I spent in their company. And if love is a thing held in common, I suppose we had that in common, too, though I realize that might sound odd in light of the story I am about to tell.

Does such a thing as 'the fatal flaw,' that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.
A moi. L'histoire d'une de mes folies.

THE SAILS: ❤️
(…)
a breeze from the sun was on hand to launch it
unaccountably into some endless, effortless orbit.

GEMINI
A sun-burn watch-strap timing the wrong wrist.
The trace of a heart-beat under the right breast.
❤️

THE STERN
My heart went out to the Falklands widow, screwed
by the Falklands hero with medals and wounds, the bloke
whose cover was blown on the day he referred
to the back of the boat as 'the back of the boat'.
(…)

SAGITTARIUS
(…)
Under the roof of leaves, wearing a green straw hat,
he's all that stands between us and never getting back,
this Indian scout, with the legs and feet of an ordinary man,
and Paul Smith T-shirt for an upper half, worn inside-out.

But there was a fine line between victims of tragic circumstance and born losers. Born losers were irritating as hell (…)

HERCULES ❤️