Because I was there for the parting of the lakes and I saw the sun swallowed up by a whale and yet I stood transfixed as fires from sunset ran into houses dorming families thrown together in stitches from the war’s end and I watched muted as trees bludgeoned the ends of houses till they cracked and took the children to the promontory and offered them dangling crying tributes to the ever widening gulf and I cried pity when the wolves came and tore men and women from their loves and saw dumbly the madness in the people erupt from a long heart’s slumber into files they ran rushing after illusions spreading in wings of sand thrown all across the air and then I saw the beast spread his colossus from under a bed bunking seventeen high and across the sky firebirds ran shedding stars and led the riot on crashing into incoherent howls of matter congealing and dechiring and the beast Colossus strode seeing all that was good in the land.
in parentheses 