Tubes
1
'Up, down, good, bad,' said
the man with the tubes
up his nose, ' there's lots
of variety…
However, notions
of balance between
extremes of fortune
are stupid—or at
best unobservant.'
He watched as the nurse
fed pellets into
the green nozzle that
stuck from his side. 'Mm,'
said the man. ' Good. Yum.
(Next time more basil…)
When a long-desired
baby is born, what
joy! More happiness
than we find in sex,
more than we take in
success, revenge, or
wealth. But should the same
infant die, would you
measure the horror
on the same rule? Grief
weighs down the seesaw;
joy cannot budge it.'
2
'When I was nineteen,
I told a thirty-
year-old man what a
fool I had been when
I was seventeen.
'We were always,' he
said glancing down, 'a
fool two years ago.''
3
The man with the tubes
up his nostrils spoke
carefully: 'I don't
regret what I did,
but that I claimed I
did the opposite.
If I was faithless
or treacherous and
cowardly, I had
my reasons—but I
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poem by Donald Hall
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