Heat Wave

Then said a teacher, Speak to us of Teach-
ing.
And he said:
No man can reveal to you aught but that
which already lies half asleep in the dawn-
ing of your knowledge.
The teacher who walks in the shadow of
the temple, among his followers, gives not

Once there ruled in the distant city of Wirani a king who was both
mighty and wise. And he was feared for his might and loved for
his wisdom.

Now, in the heart of that city was a well, whose water was cool and
crystalline, from which all the inhabitants drank, even the king
and his courtiers; for there was no other well.

One night when all were asleep, a witch entered the city, and poured
seven drops of strange liquid into the well, and said, “From this
hour he who drinks this water shall become mad.”

Next morning all the inhabitants, save the king and his lord
chamberlain, drank from the well and became mad, even as the witch
had foretold.

And during that day the people in the narrow streets and in the
market places did naught but whisper to one another, “The king is
mad. Our king and his lord chamberlain have lost their reason.
Surely we cannot be ruled by a mad king. We must dethrone him.”

That evening the king ordered a golden goblet to be filled from the
well. And when it was brought to him he drank deeply, and gave it
to his lord chamberlain to drink.

And there was great rejoicing in that distant city of Wirani,
because its king and its lord chamberlain had regained their reason.

I
Happy are men who yet before they are killed
Can let their veins run cold.
Whom no compassion fleers
Or makes their feet
Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers.
The front line withers.
But they are troops who fade, not flowers,
For poets’ tearful fooling:
Men, gaps for filling:
Losses, who might have fought
Longer; but no one bothers.

“All quiet along the Potomac,” they say,
“Except, now and then, a stray picket
Is shot as he walks on his beat to and fro,
By a rifleman hid in the thicket.
’Tis nothing—a private or two, now and then,
Will not count in the news of the battle;
Not an officer lost—only one of the men
Moaning out, all alone, his death-rattle.”

* * * * * *

All quiet along the Potomac to-night,
Where the soldiers lie peacefully dreaming;
Their tents, in the rays of the clear autumn moon
Or the light of the watch-fire, are gleaming.

In a pyloned desert where the scorpion reigns
My love and I plucked poppies breathing tales
Of crimes now long asleep, whose once–red stains
Dyed stabbing men, at sea with bloody sails.
The golden sand drowsed. There a dog yelped loud;
And in his cry rattled a hollow note
Of deep uncanny knowledge of that crowd
That loved and bled in winy times remote.
The poppies fainted when the moon came wide;
The cur lay still. Our passionate review
Of red wise folly dreamed on . . . She by my side
Stared at the Moon; and then I knew he knew.
And then he smiled at her; to him ’twas funny—
Her calm steel eyes, her earth–old throat of honey!

Cervantes was asleep when he wrote Don Quixote.
Joyce slept during the Wandering Rocks section of Ulysses.
Homer nodded and occasionally slept during the greater part of the Iliad; he was awake however when he wrote the Odyssey.
Proust snored his way through The Captive, as have legions of his readers after him.
Melville was asleep at the wheel for much of Moby-Dick.
Fitzgerald slept through Tender Is the Night, which is perhaps not so surprising,
but the fact that Mann slumbered on the very slopes of The Magic Mountain is quite extraordinary—that he wrote it, even more so.
Kafka, of course, never slept, even while not writing or on bank holidays.

I don’t remember exactly when Budberg died, it was either two years
ago or three.
The same with Chen. Whether last year or the one before.
Soon after our arrival, Budberg, gently pensive,
Said that in the beginning it is hard to get accustomed,
For here there is no spring or summer, no winter or fall.

“I kept dreaming of snow and birch forests.
Where so little changes you hardly notice how time goes by.

The messenger runs, not carrying the news
of victory, or defeat; the messenger, unresting,
has always been running, the wind before and behind him,
across the turning back of earth, leaving
his tracks across the plains, his ropes
hanging from the ledges of mountains;
for centuries, millennia, he has been running
carrying whatever it is that cannot be

For Rafael Heliodoro Valle I set out from the Port of Acapulco on the twenty-third of March
And kept a steady course until Saturday, the fourth of April, when