Who should have warned him that the rigid soldiers of lost intentions would troop along his walls, rank upon rank in faded jackets, and begin a silent dress parade of things long forgotten or unread. That the telephone would gasp into the morning without reprieve the same empty mechanized voice and that only a smudged glass at his bedside would hold forth without question to the end its last trembling dram of courage. The waves' insistent shushing in the cove. A lone gull on a rooftop hacking at the gray sheets of the fog. Nothing sings in this white- hot furnace.
Words fly up like ash.
What icons to honor, what votives to keep. A briefcase snaps like a reptile. A doorlock booms like a drum. Engines hum amid static. Let them be shamed, let them be routed.