#109

Hobbledehoy. Osgood-Schlater's. Down the road. Up the stairs. The phlegmatic wanderer. Jeehyun joins to say: the truth. And Benjy, henceforth Adam, is at them with his charm. Library (Day 2), it's Andy, Adam, Adrian on the fourth. The fourth, which is music and the words of sophists, friends. JMR they say, JMR. It's British: suck. But John, he's on the third, in the thirties, novels and poems in a stack. What does Stephen think? He says, "Would I these words were woods, thick and pathless." He has on jeans and a blue dress shirt (his father's). Outside the windows of the southern wall, one can see it's storming.

Our profit, lame. Intestate. Like St. Stephen of the Portrait (and this is Valerie's thought). A house of doors, they'll cast him, each open save for one. Oh, middens! (And that is Square's phrase). His quiff and his quaere. I am a wordsmith, a blacksmith, a tunesmith of the mind. Making and maid - those stable women of the stories. Immobile Calypso, stone Nausicaa. Let her be Medea, and it is Stephen who will be read in two.

#108

Day 1, the walk to campus.

Sq: The fould fiend Flibbertigibitt - any word?
St: He's called, but I've not answered.
Sq: Ah yes, take his words and give him silence.
St: Humph...
Sq: And La Donna di...di...
St: Okay, I think. She's going out. I mean, to New Jersey this weekend.
Sq: Non piu` la donna, I guess.
St: I guess.

Day 7, coffee with Valerie.

He felt for a moment as if Square were with him, exchanging her words with others - hearing, for example, colleague as comrade, so that her departure was no longer for a teaching position in York, but for the Irish War for Independence, or the Revolution of 1789.

#107

April showers. The forward hands of clocks. Charlotte, in the tea house, holds her newborn child. She speaks the mother tongue. I, in dim light, read my Cassirer: symbolic forms, and fuss, and fossick. Jeehyun invites me to dinner. The night at Nodding Head. Lightning. I am still no means to be here.

And what descends? And is it sunrise? The flux of words become words. Square and his sounds skipping over the wait. Gods of thunder, infinite. While I tend to the passage of women. The men that draw them distract. Anon, anon. What have you with your art? Oh, Stephen, we are not so easy at dissembling.

The things that come in dashes, periods. The mirrored L in which we pose our bodies. Not down, not up, not in at all. But halfway, seated, hands that hulk, that fall on figures varied. In station, in a windowed room. Our two tales - each formed from lines. Our inscriptions, each inscribed. We are pale, pale imitations. Impotent artists, Stephen, who will teach our work to crawl.

#106

Cryptograms, and old orthography. The cast in vizards feast. Our Hero Stephen scripted black, a prolix prophet. And recall: the room, the root, the natural digest. Nomos. A blip in the time of hands. Lead-time, for the earth's devices. And Sarah - see her paddling palms. And why, and or. The line between her legs. Stephen's extracampine sight. Mark her, grapheme, disregard. And see the sex of things. Without stands Stephen, capped in awe, revolt, and rises as if winged. He will fetch himself off to heaven.