So I spoke in a chorus of three different voices:
of a gun-shy banshee,
of a landlocked merman,
of Orpheus himself wih a bad case of laryngitis,
and said, Where is this performance getting us?
And the Sphinx—at least I took her for the Sphinx:
according to the sextant,
the fix seemed right for the road to Thebes,
and she had the same firm
hoyden impersonal breasts that Ingres endows her with—
said, "Not much of anywhere as far as I can tell.
Where are you trying to get to?"
Nowhere that I know of.
"Then you are heading the wrong way,
turning your back on it. This is the road
from nowhere that you know of
to nowhere that you don't know of."
Is there much difference?
"How should I know? All that I've been to
is the nowhere that / know of."
So I scuffed it all out
and started over again.