Having my way with Ulysses

The dog’s bark ran toward him, stopped, ran back

• Proteus

Is not your time as irreversible as that same river where Heraclitus, mirrored, saw the symbol of fleeting life? A marble slab awaits you which you will not read -- on it, already written, the date, the city, and the epitaph. Other men too are only dreams of time, not indestructible bronze or burnished gold; the universe is, like you, a Proteus. Dark you will enter the darkness that awaits you, doomed to the limits of your traveled time. Know that in some sense you are already dead. 11:30 am

Haines, the dog of my enemy, and I just stood pale, silent, bayed about.  What do I want from these pretenders then or now.  Live their lives.  His life to be his and mine to be mine.  For this I am pining?  He is not fortune, he is fortune’s primrose knave.  Smiling at my fear.  Mocking me in their house of death.  Enough.  Nobody wants my medieval abstrusiosities.  Tell the truth.  He saves men from drowning and I shake at a dog’s bark.  Would I save somebody?  I’m not a strong swimmer.  The water is cold, soft.  But spit it out, yes, I would want to.  I would try.  It’s his eyes, though, a drowning man’s eyes scream the horror of his death.  I would drown with him.  Together.  I could not save her.  Lost.

Intercourse, eyeball to eyeball.