“ … everyone now living is experimenting

like the beautiful River Volga

writing herself in lazy meander

fingerlets inactive

in the hay between tractors.

Then what am I by comparison

—Augean?

Where the ombuds meets the diligence

with odic effervescence

anything in opera plotwise

renders one’s own account small

one’s way

paper thin.

Nevertheless we begin.

The exact words were overturned prophylaxis

scratched onto the stable floor

by the helpless ass and his sister

whose candid retort rhymes proxy

precisely with precosity

and something ending in ‘head.’ Then

will our wooden limbs fly

with a giddy-up

from here to the last eucalyptus nut

where otherwise fog might find itself dreadful

and hanging.”
From that point on the hike was silent.