75

these cold days in May give me the woolly-willies:
it’s hard to maintain an erection out in the

windchill: the young women cannot see your ardent
carriage increased when the wind outlines

them in savory ways: (it takes old guys half
an hour to start pissing and the rest of the

day to finish): southwetserly: why is it that
the truth is not half as believable as the

unlikely: why?, why because the truth runs
from indifferent to terrifying (“we die”)

whereas the unlikeliest possibility we have
any evidence of is that (“we don’t”): but it

is just the unlikeliness that introduces the
presence of the marvelous, abrogations and

effects only gods could arrange: the unbelievable
(through faith) becomes the most believable

while the dull flood of pure truth, abundant,
overwhelming, obvious, just washes us away:

what has an old man to do with a purpose: what
long field or range of hills has he to play his

purpose through: alas, at the butt end of what
was, he totes up his tedious results and sorts

about in them for a flicker of stone or gleam
of dust, his purpose to reckon up so much

trash played out into dribbles and feints: but
sometimes old men limping about as if on

broken bones will have excellent hearing and
the snickers of the young, or just the rude

impatience, will smite and jar them and drive
them off ever so castaway to the park benches

of neglect and shame: to the young the finicky
faults of the old are comedies split with

contrast: but the butt end of all your days &
ways is a little arousing, if you get my point:

see also, fag end: caught up in the woodsy
wiles, flickers and gleams, of LIFE, Robert,

perceiving he could go either way, went the way
his imagination less frequently went, which

was, for him, the way most people go, so he had
a fairly normal life—house, children, wife,

cow, and a side of poems: