"Neither the Heavens are Humane, nor is life above or below - or within me."

- Bohumil Hrabal, Too Loud a Solitude

"The bull of the days is skewbald
the cart of the years is slow
Our god is speed
the heart is our drum"
- V. Mayakovsky, Our March

Long-suffering Slavs
and Slavophiles
overwhelmed by the menageries
of of shit and divinity
understand very well
rapports as pipelines-
the agency of he who suffers
and his mistress,
the chemical become his mind;
understand very well
that so many angels dancing
on the head of a pin
is dazzling,
but the single angel perched on the needle's tip,
in her rarefied state of companionship,
is an edifying object of study.
She does not dizzy, but appears to illuminate.
He who aspires to intelligence
knows this single angel
better than the passage of years
that has flung him through
his life in hyper-stimulation,
and the scent given off
by the angel's arm on a warm day
comes clearly, and appears true
to one of such heart
who feels so daily confused
and between his positions.