Guardedly, we resume the gentle game,
despite the ill repute to which it's
plummeted of late, in the question-
able company it's been keeping at Mar-
a-Lago. Yet even warfare, we note, is
not immune from vulgarizing bounders,
of which we are teased to expect more,
any time the spirit moves the tiny fin-
gers of fate to rend another butterfly.
As we wait, we study rules of precedent.
Likeliest by far, needless to say,
is the occasion invoked by Article
5, which is such a daily feature of
morbidly fitful TV mood swings,
as to give substance abuse a good
name. Perpetually petulant moving of
the ball has taken on that antic
unpredictability associated with an
infant's swatting of a toy suspend-
ed over his crib, so that to speak
ever of defining the lie has become
purely conditional. We are expected,
it seems, to become so bored by this
behavior, as no longer to notice it.
But the macabre has its moments, as
in trekking through a fog of buoyant
munitions, fleeing natural light. It
is, after all, only for the duration.
Childe Hassam
Montauk
1921
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