Manhattan dialogue I chanced one day, off the joggers’ circuit in Central Park, to come across a young black man fast asleep upon a bench below the lake. His overcoat was thrown over him, his books were placed neatly side by side upon the ground. His head upon his clasped hands, as in kindergarten plays, he was breathing regularly and gently, as though bewitched. Even as I watched, a grey squirrel, skipping across the green, leapt across his legs to the back of the bench, where it sat tremulously chewing, and almost at the same time there arose a brisk gust of wind, tangy with salt. A scatter of leaves and fallen blossoms came with it, flicked and eddied around the bench. The squirrel paused, twitched and vanished. The black man opened his eyes, as the breeze dusted his face, and, seeing me standing there bemused, smiled me a slow sleepy smile. ‘Be not afeared,’ I said ridiculously, on the spur of the moment, ‘the isle is full of noises.’ ‘Yeah,’ the man replied, stretching and scratching mightily in the morning.
