HORACE IV. i It’s over, love. Look at me pushing fifty now,    Hair like grave-grass growing in both ears, The piles and boggy prostate, the crooked penis,    The sour taste of each day’s first lie, And that recurrent dream of years ago pulling    A swaying bead-chain of moonlight, Of slipping between the cool sheets of dark    Along a body like my own, but blameless. What good’s my cut-glass conversation now,    Now I’m so effortlessly vulgar and sad? You get from life what you can shake from it?    For me, it’s g and t’s all day and CNN. Try the blond boychick lawyer, entry level    At eighty grand, who pouts about overtime, Keeps Evian and a beeper in his locker at the gym,    And hash in tinfoil under the office fern. There’s your hound from heaven, with buccaneer    Curls and perfumed war-paint on his nipples. His answering machine always has room for one more    Slurred, embarrassed call from you-know-who. Some nights I’ve laughed so hard the tears    Won’t stop. Look at me now. Why now? I long ago gave up pretending to believe    Anyone’s memory will give as good as it gets. So why these stubborn tears? And why do I dream    Almost every night of holding you again, Or at least of diving after you, my long-gone,    Through the bruised unbalanced waves?

“You don’t know anything about these worlds,” he said, but the fight was bleeding out of his voice. “Sure I do,” countered Lila cheerfully. “There’s Dull London, Kell London, Creepy London, and Dead London,” she recited, ticking them off on her fingers. “See? I’m a fast learner.”