Loneliness has followed me my whole life- in cars and in bars. It haunts me like the headwind on this road. Tonight I drink, and drink deeply. “Get drunk!”, said the great poet. Get Drunk!

…

Celestine! I try not to read your name in curls of smoke from the poppy. Apolline! I try not to see our lustry embrace in interwoven grass that I trample underfoot.

Lo! La vallée: I spent the last two days in the valley, helping a young widow move the stones from her garden. It was her loneliness that first drew me to partake of the thick brown stew that she ladled into stone bowls with a heavy, wooden spoon. How humble and happy her spirit after a day’s work! I can know no such simple peace. I do not belong in the widow’s garden soiling my calfskin boots. I do not belong at her table with my poison heart, bloated corpse eye and my mind a teeming wasp’s nest. The herd in the meadow watched with open, bovine curiosity when we parted at her gate. In my haste to be gone I ran over the snarling tomcat that she called Chester in the yard.