We had always meant these things to be fun. And we had always meant these things to be extravagant. After all, we ourselves were fun and we were extravagant. If there had been fools to give our money to, we would have given our money to all the fools. And if we had been princesses, we would have given them all our jewels. There was nothing we would hide, and nothing we would not disclose. We went to market with our wallets open, our purses unstrung. One time, an archer among us, he had a quiver full of one thousand arrows, and he shot one thousand arrows directly into the heart of the Sun. The entire time he laughed, and was laughing. One of us, a dreamer, woke up laughing. “I dreamt a dream,” he said, upon waking, and then went back to sleep forever. The bankers banked. The looters looted. These were glorious times, and everyone did as he did. And everyone, too, did as she did. A seamstress among us, she sewed seams by night and day. The proprietor of a butcher shop, she cut with an ax bones and meat all day. Ah, these were glorious times indeed! Sometime a hard rain fell, and it was just that, nothing more: a hard rain. Since then, everything was mixed up. Since then, everything has been mixed up. Times and tenses askew, awry. . . .The pickpockets sell candy and trinkets on the corner place. The realtors herd sheep in the meadow. The priests sells bonds to large companies. The newspaper carriers collect extinct passenger pigeons in glass boxes, or pin the wings of butterflies back on white framing paper. The teachers peddle marbles and board games which of course nobody thinks of ever buying. The dancers fish coins out of wishing wells in this or that piazza. Some of us, who were the loners, we harken back in our minds to simpler times which we all still sometimes remember, chatting now about the old days gone, around campfires to our new found friends crouching with us there in the glowing dark.
Egbert Starr 