The Ghent Review Volume1, Number 1, summer 2016 | Page 56

Down this street into the future. What meetings, what conversations await?
I will not be guided. No is the equal, and superior, of yes in certain
circumstances and pronunciations.
A cigarette and a flame’s flare. In the daylight no less.
Must be careful in crossing the road. Traffic. The many lives about me – how
shall they be named? By fire or by cloud? Clouds above me like puffed
meringues. Tasty. A good bakery will have them. Time to stop and eat soon –
but with what coins my brethren?
No matter.
Melt in the mouth and are gone. Coins gone. Had so few paper notes to
begin with. Had. Not now. No matter. Something will happen. Something
always does even if not the desired. That’s the future. That’s the certainty of
the uncertainty.
A saint’s dilemma?
Or a fools?
No matter. There is now and for the moment that is all that matters.
Though it might rain. White turn to grey turn to black clouds. Then
darkness with no fire before me. Fire within. Best place to have it. The only
true guidance. Albeit for forty years I will wander.
No sailor I – landsman. Breugel’s offspring with a Dantesque touch. But
this is not hell nor am I in it. Would be according to his definition. Should
be according to another. But this is not hell nor am I in it. Nor paradise for
the soul’s delight.
What is my soul’s delight? This here, this now, this unfolding future.
You will die alone was her prophecy. Four coins in her hand placed to be
told this. A cheap wisdom I bought. Yet have paid more and bought less..
Often. Too often. A double poverty. Yet not to my soul’s penury. Not that.
Though Midas in reverse they call me.