and then our exile

the gentle heave and fall, spreading pagan grace
recall has arrived. meet, greet, the air fills with fog.

here is the night / the night has begun. l. told me not to listen to cohen in the evening, "it makes the world too bleak," she said. digging deep the salted earth.

the csis agent sighed, across from me in tim hortons. "everyone's a critic," he shook his head.

he is tall, dark curly hair, loud laugh, an ebullient, effusive personality, he has a pretty girlfriend, is almost finished a grand academic career. we were sitting to lunch, a widespread buffet, we'd wandered around looking at foods for some time. "basit, are you vegetarian?" (i said something about muslims eating halal meats.) "oh, that's cool." but then - and this was what surprised me - he paused, turning the fork in his fingers: "there's this space inside, emptiness, you know? like the spiritual side hasn't ever been filled." then he laughed, shortly, and started eating, returned to talking with the others in our group.

clarifate, the paragraph below was two thoughts spliced and grafted & so maybe confusing. the first thought was the tremendous importance of personal mythologies, the second was subjectivity without subjectivism. for the first, backstory includes babaji's speech ("for the writers of my generation...its worth lay in its anchorage in a personal mythology of such complexity that it should not be accessible to any save a few") and that personal constructs themselves become producers of meaning. the second thought was trying to reconcile semi-exclusive narratives i do believe in with plurality.

though these be the last verses

a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point
and, with irony, sic itur ad astra...