The Body May Be Healed but the Mind is Incurable

It was as if the city had pulled the sheets over our heads. O you were the veiled virgin and I your traveling salesman. I hypnotized you with my watch of nightingales. You’re sick all of a sudden and trembling in your bed, and then you’re well and the whole business is over. Now snow is falling, now a spinster is sweeping each individual flake from her crumbling stoop, now I start the nightlong task of calculating your bill.