so he drank his gin and accepted a dish

of sausage soup, free on Thursdays

with a beverage and so found the Olympian balance

of sorrow and pleasure.

                                             II

He had been reading on the park bench

and stared into the gray of the last roses,

there were no titans, just shrubs

thinned out by fall.

He put down his book. It was a day like any other

and the people were like all people everywhere,

that was how it would always be, at least

this mixture of death and laughter would persist.

A scent is enough to change things,

even small flowers stand in some relation to a cedar of Lebanon,

then he walked on and saw the windows of the furriers

were full of warm things for the winter ahead.