I stood there on the bridge and watched the moonbeams vanish
the smirking crocodiles. Now and again one of them slid from the
mud and ghoulishly passed beneath me like an iceberg on the
prowl. I was a feverish swindler in edible birds’ nests with a
muted interest in guano. With my clawed valise and rugged
charm I traveled the islands, stopping in dumpy hotels in search
of fortune, frowning my way through monsoon or lurking in
muffled teak forests. Some day I’d end up on a slab of marble
in Aukland, a mustard seed clutched in my fist, foiled at last in
my own perishable rhapsody. The damage done but no one to
call it folly.
     Far off now I hear drumming, then a wail, twangings of an
extinct instrument. Footfalls. That face, I know it: it is the class
president from my high school. What does he want of me now,
in this infernal jungle, nine thousand miles and twenty-five years
from that poisonous fenced-in playground for imbeciles.
    He was puffing and frothing in his lawyer’s garb: “You must
come, we need you…” I flung my cigarette into the river, a
crimson knot of hope against such stammering accidents as this.
And yet, what good is it. Already rasping machines are turning
my life into a twenty-five word account. It’s none of your beeswax, I
wanted to say. Instead, slipping into something comfortable, I
made haste, stumbled and bluntly accepted the call, the signal
from the pit, to return to my nook in the deaf opulence of fossils
mending their clocks.