For A Time They Confronted

In The War To Come Correspondents Would Assume Unheard Of Importance, Plunging Through Flame To Feed The Public Its Little Gobbets Of Dehydrated Excrement.

Good God, If Our Civilization Were To Sober Up For A Couple Of Days It'd Die Of Remorse On The Third.

There Was No Mistaking, Even In The Uncertain Light, The Hand, Half Crabbed, Half Generous, And Wholly Drunken, Of The Consul Himself, The Greek E's, The Flying Buttresses Of D's, The T's Like Lonely Wayside Crosses Save Where They Crucified An Entire Word.

Never Think That By Releasing Me You Will Be Free. You Would Only Condemn Us To An Ultimate Hell On Earth. You Would Only Free Something Else To Destroy Us Both.

The Howling Pariah Dogs, The Cocks That Herald Dawn All Night, The Drumming, The Moaning That Will Be Found Later White Plumage Huddled On Telegraph Wires In Back Gardens Or Fowl Roosting In Apple Trees, The Eternal Sorrow That Never Sleeps Of Great Mexico.