And you shall wear the robe and crown.

Hard weather, says the old man. So let it be. Wrap me in the weathers of the earth, I will be hard and hard. My face will wash rain like the stones. 

I look inside my heart, it’s filled with devils and dust.

I have seen them in a dream, slaverous and wild and their eyes crazed with ravening for souls in this world. Fly them.

It took days to cross that ashen scabland.

Say, any of you boys smithies?

Oh Lawd, Berta Berta, Oh lawd gal, who-ah.

I spoke with bitterness about my life and I said that I would take my own part against the slander of oblivion and against the monstrous facelessness of it and that I would stand a stone in the very void where all would read my name. Of that vanity I recant all.