This is the sorrowful story
Told as the twilight fails
And the monkeys walk together
Holding their neighbours’ tails
Rudyard Kipling, The Legends of Evil
A Jester should not sound so apologetic, for, after all he is an exile too. Do not let his characters apologise, avoid at all costs putting humble, apologetic attitudes into the mouths of his characters. Monkey does as monkey is. I must make him more cynical, more cutting, call his wit “Irrelevant Apology” or “No Thanks to You”. I insisted, “My characters are finally ready to break their silence!” And that was it.
.
“We are finally ready to break our silence!”
“The antidote?”
“There is no known antidote, sir…”
Little rocks, little lumps of ice, little old bits of space junk, exiles, young and old alike and I am, near Willowtown Creek, weeping willows, orbiting. The field is launching me into orbit. It all orbits and it all has only, has solely a slight physical effect as becomes shooting stars, as we become shooting stars, electric threads, fleeting frictions, beauty.
Friction. Me on my back in the black grass in a pasture in a place I have only just invented, in a field, near Willowtown Creek. Willowtown Creek, Taylor County, Kentucky, U.S.A. Weeping, for my ideas are threadbare thoughts, shooting stars never on a collision course to let me know that they exist, and if ever they did, of course, my “I” would scream to the universe, “I….I can’t sew….”
I be a pure thread of white cotton fine
But not until lovingly woven
A funeral shroud do I weave sublime
David F. Brandon, A painter
“Hand the monkeys the loom, my good man!”