Our competing lifestyles lost us the Australian double
that semester. And couldn’t we then arrange
to do the other, and was the desert that limitless,
and why not say so? You see, griping comes naturally
to me and to all mankind. Once, when shut up
at the bottom of a shaft of some kind, I
assumed that the world would just trickle naturally
around whatever feet I was wearing, and increased
morbid curiosity would result. Hold on there!
No, I meant it, plangently, like small waves rubbing
against a reef, or the sighing of mice behind a grill.
This is yours to manipulate, they said,
yours to live on. That’s only what they said.
I’m guessing that she told you the same,
and idlers copied it to their remotest constituency
and to a whole lot of other things, belike.