Old People, With Other Old People, Are

He Spent Six Hours Examining Things, Trying To Find A Difference From Their Appearance On The Previous Day In The Hope Of Discovering In Them Some Change That Would Reveal The Passage Of Time.

We Had Made Love Without Love, Half-dressed Most Of The Time And Always In The Dark So We Could Imagine Ourselves As Better Than We Were.

There Had Never Been A Death So Foretold.

...and The Cries Of The Birds And The Uproar Of The Monkeys Became More And More Remote, And The World Became Eternally Sad. The Men On The Expedition Felt Overwhelmed By Their Most Ancient Memories In That Paradise Of Dampness And Silence, Going Back To Before Original Sin, As Their Boots Sank Into Pools Of Steaming Oil And Their Machetes Destroyed Bloody Lilies And Golden Salamanders.

Because He Had Not Done What She, With Her Heart In Her Mouth, Had Hoped He Would Do, Which Was To Be A Man: Deny Everything, And Swear On His Life It Was Not True, And Grow Indignant At The False Accusation, And Shout Curses At This Ill-begotten Society That Did Not Hesitate To Trample On One's Honor, And Remain Imperturbable Even When Forced With Crushing Proofs Of His Disloyalty.