Let each year decay and each decade: to receive report is not enough, equations of the mathematician must each come wrong, strangely, inexplicably, the remedies must run dry, the violet must let no more tincture and the waters no more cool. When, at mudtimes, we trek to the waterfall, there it should no longer be — nothing should fall where the guidebook says, not orchids, not taro, not the market, not the fishmonger thrashing carp against rock where once we bought it bloody on the board. If we are at war with a holy book in our hands let it shrivel to slag; its teachings cannot survive the drone and will not gleam while villagers drink the ditch. If we wage it, let the war breach up into the light, let it unseam our garments where they hold fast, let each button and string fail until we run to hide ourselves in alleys where at least rats and refuse and the sleeping poor show some partial ghost of what’s abroad. If we war there ought to be a sign. Our lives should feel like cut-outs of lives, paper dolls drifting to the ground, ready for chalk outlines.
