Dinner, then speeches, though many of you’d prefer direct action
instead of more talk; and you can handle digging holes, slitting throats.
Shorten the speeches, therefore. Language is danger. Let’s disengage
before we make things worse by admitting violence attracts. Red
skies. Reddened earth and rivers. Indifference of the camera.
Eyes, agents of the brain, send evil out as well as witness it.
If you were driven up by knife and gun, you’d climb the steep path to
cliff-edge, and then you’d leap, I guess, or curl fetally till shoved off.
Continental drift, disastrous jolts, no less predictable. My
intent’s to get through this. I’m very intent on that. As are you.
Age–I’m sixty three–doesn’t matter: even sages acknowledge
rage, and I’m not so sage as I’d like to be. I grew up cowboy.
Broken treaties with the Indians, was that supposed to faze me?
Spoken rhymes with broken, in my book. Written down with smitten down.