Now let me draw you back to Hoel’s naissance in the city with the second tallest spires and the vast majority of cows. Let us meander along the rutted bywaysof his colonial youth, and, at length—the salt scent bursting in wafts more pronounced—out onto the corniche where no matter how implacable the drubbing blows of Brother Sun, Hoel could always ride his bicycle a meter in from the seawall, for it was there that the breakers delivered up their tenderest after-orgasms of cooling foam. Then lean the cycle in the shaded L where tower and wall abut and up the spiralsteps of the citadel, proof too from sun-fire by virtue of its inconceivable thickness, and peer through the topmost slit, out over the star defenses, beyond the breakers with their toppled columns rolling nowhere but to and fro, and parts of ships and men dashed everywhere among them.

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