Inconveniences Rightly Considered

III. Conversatio

  He should have been he who wrote this,

  I of him it was written,

  for I am always past my prime

  and he is always gone too soon,

  he the poet dead,

  And I?

  I take the road all travel by

  until they've served their time,

  a tab is opened at birth,

  a tap in the wine cask,

  and it pours out

  day after day

  it pours

  and when it's through, it's through.

  Not fate, no not fate,

  we cannot know the time, the way, the day

  but when there's no more, there's no more,

  Wine runs dry.

  II. The Meal

  (when you're out, you're out boys, aren't no seconds tonight)

  III. Conversatio

  Nevermore.

  I hear

  in Ernest

  as I stand before the coffin

  of the little shepherd poet: