The Evil Seekers

We are born with luck which is to say with gold in our mouth. As new and smooth as a grape, as pure as a pond in Alaska, as good as the stem of a green bean-- we are born and that ought to be enough, we ought to be able to carry on from that but one must learn about evil, learn what is subhuman, learn how the blood pops out like a scream, one must see the night before one can realize the day, one must listen hard to the animal within, one must walk like a sleepwalker on the edge of a roof, one must throw some part of her body into the devil's mouth. Odd stuff, you'd say. But I'd say you must die a little, have a book of matches go off in your hand, see your best friend copying your exam, visit an Indian reservation and see their plastic feathers, the dead dream. One must be a prisoner just once to hear the lock twist into his gut. After all that one is free to grasp at the trees, the stones, the sky, the birds that make sense out of air. But even in a telephone booth evil can seep out of the receiver and we must cover it with a mattress, and then tear it from its roots and bury it, bury it.