Restrained no more, the last rebelling man,
Alone as he had always wished to be,
Sole monarch of himself, with not a clan,
Nor tribe, not state, nor nation left that he,
Protesting, must obey, has sat him down
Upon the last green acreage of sod
And woven of the pliant grass a crown
To show the rotted dead that he is God.
To show the dead his is the only face;
His thought the only consciousness; his eye
The only judge of substance or o space;
His skull the only congruence with sky.
And singing loud his praise he spends his breath.
Extinguishing the universe in death.
Notes on Anosmia
One morning several years ago, as my wife, Wendy, and I were having breakfast together, I had…
Empire of Unreality
Shiva Naipaul (1945–1985) was the author of three novels and two books of mordant dispatches from places…
The Dreadful Christ of Pär Lagerkvist
It’s dangerous to meet a god,” says the disgraced Pythia in Pär Lagerkvist’s The Sibyl. Her observation…