My Enemies

I don't mind my enemies... They have been bustling around me, or near me, or lurking in the river valley across from my estate for ages past counting. Such is the nature of enemies in our time. My servants tell me they are massing on the frontier. Thousands of them, more arriving each month. But there's laxness in their formation. They sprawl across the plain, many of them drunk. No drums are beat, no trumpets sound. Can you see now why I don't mind them? They are like the single crow, apart from his murder, who perches on the apex of my Montaigne House. Every morning when I enter it, he caws and flaps his wings. I ignore him and ascend the staircase. I observe the world and its turnings from my fourth level study. My books are treasures equal to my lands. They are maps, they are recipes, they are laws. Sometimes, while reading, I look straight up into the sky, light flashes into my eyes like an illumination... My servants report my enemies lurk in the shadows of the wide colonnaded avenue of the marketplace. They stare at merchants and traders, passers-by are troubled by their silent gaze. At nightfall, they retreat into deeper shadows. Others stagger at the edge of the city. They are not drunk, they are fevered. They push helping citizens aside, and collapse into corners and alleys. Our doctors rule out a return of the Plague. Meanwhile, they collect the dead. Beyond the safety of the Montaigne House, crows caw all day every day, thousands still occupy the frontier. I am in my study, enveloped in shafts of light that never dim. Things could be much worse. The world could stop spinning. Stars implode. Rivers flood. My books burn... I have so much to mind.