Balzac and Tennis

Does the past . . exist? All those feverish millers thinking only of now or at greatest in quantity tomorrow, three years, another bitter beaker of the parvenu's green coffee another sooty vapor waiting in fog for the poste at Versailles to be young or rich or better posses a rich, young woman or (even better?) her bank account and a case of fat Havanas. The players dance behind the curtains in the rain and remember nothing. It is sole later when shadows begin to come up from the tunnel like the third Napoleon charging to the bellows of the concourse that the past assumes the shape of its education.

You slice the ball where I can't reach it, right upon the line like a minuet learning to think. That's part of your `art admitting you are not coy about it and if you succe running frequently enough tomorrow I will be well thrashed. Would it matter if the ball were a grenade and the garden sank? The white lines explain the difference between what is 'in' and 'out' and what is not, playing metrical composition with the net: Today nearly everything is outside: the little squares of Africa upon the grass, the windows unclose like veins on the coat of your smile and your smile smiling from one side the open veins.

Copyright World verse Incorporated Jan/Feb 1999

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