Clifford

So we are taking off our masks, are we, and keeping our mouths shut? as if we'd been pierced by a glance!The song of an old cow is not more full of judgment than the vapors which escape one's soul when one is sick;so I pull the shadows around me like a puff and crinkle my eyes as if at the most exquisite momentof a very long opera, and then we are off! without reproach and without hope that our delicate feetwill touch the earth again, let alone "very soon." It is the law of my own voice I shall investigate.I start like ice, my finger to my ear, my ear to my heart, that proud cur at the garbage canin the rain. It's wonderful to admire oneself with complete candor, tallying up the merits of eachof the latrines. 14th Street is drunken and credulous, 53 rd tries to tremble but is too at rest. The goodlove a park and the inept a railway station, and there are the divine ones who drag themselves upand down the lengthening shadow of an Abyssinian head in the dust, trailing their long elegant heels of hot aircrying to confuse the brave "It's a summer day, and I want to be wanted more than anything else in the world."