[It’s your mom. She’s finished yelling at me now she wants to talk to you.]

[He turned to go and bumped hard into the shoulder of a man standing next to him—Oh!]

[Thorns all around him black and glistening but he passed through unhurt and out the door pulling his overcoat around him as he went.]

[Do you see that, says Ancash. Beautiful, Herakles breathes out. He is looking at the men. I mean the fire, says Ancash.]

[He forgot for a moment that he was a brokenheart then he remembered.]

[Sick lurch downward to Geryon trapped in his own bad apple.]

[Below in the living room everything was motionless. Drapes closed, chairs asleep.]

[Are there many little boys who think they are a Monster? But in my case I am right said Geryon to the Dog they were sitting on the bluffs The Dog regarded him Joyfully]

[He was red and his strange red cattle excited envy Herakles came and killed him for his cattle The dog too]

[Spirit rules secretly alone the body achieves nothing is something you know instinctively at fourteen and can still remember even with hell in your head at sixteen.]

[Can I show you our volcano?]

[Is Geryon sulking again said the baby-sitter entering the kitchen. No, said the fruit bowl.]

[The red monster sat at a corner table of Café Mitwelt writing bits of Hiedegger on the postcard he’d bought.]

[Trust me she said Engineer of his softness You don’t have to make up your mind right away]

VI. MEANWHILE IN HEAVEN Athena was looking down through the floor of the glass-bottomed boat Athena pointed Zeus looked Him

“ To deny the existence of red is to deny the existence of mystery. The soul which does so will one day go mad.”

[I am too naked, he thought. This thought seemed profound. And I want to be in love with someone. This too fell on him deeply.]