I Never Knew What Life Was Until

As If It Were Our Very Birthright, Which We Could Not Come To Grasp The Meaning Of Until This Time Of Middle Life When We Looked On Only As Many Years Ahead As Already Lay Behind Us.

But During All These Years I Had A Vague But Persistent Desire To Return To New Orleans. I Never Forgot New Orleans. And When We Were In Tropical Places And Places Of Those Flowers And Trees That Grow In Louisiana, I Would Think Of It Acutely And I Would Feel For My Home The Only Glimmer Of Desire I Felt For Anything Outside My Endless Pursuit Of Art.

Despair Was So Familiar To Me; It Could Be Banished By The Sight Of A Beautiful Mannikin In The Window. It Could Be Dispelled By The Spectacle Of Lights Surrounding A Tower. It Could Be Lifted By The Great Ghostly Shape Of St. Patrick's Coming Into View. And Then Despair Would Come Again.

Garden Of Pain, I Need You. What Were The Songs Of Beasts To The Cries Of Sentient Souls?

The World Changes, We Do Not, Therein Lies The Irony That Kills Us.