These thoughts and emotions formed themselves in Carl’s mood as he strolled through the clattering, mercenary sounds of a midwestern city. The joy of not being compelled to cope with undesired physical movements brought its lightness to his legs, and he hurriedly fished for secrets from the thousands of faces gliding past him. This shrouded girl with a scowling face--was she meditating upon the possibility of suicide, or wondering why her sweetheart had failed to purchase a more expensive box of candy? Each face curved its flesh over a triviality or an important affair and swiftly taunted his imagination, challenging it to remove the masks that confronted it. “Life holds a measure of anticipation and mystery because people for the most part pass each other in silence. If they stopped to talk to each other they would become transparent and wearisome.” As Carl walked along hope began to sing its juvenile ballade within his contorted heart. He planned to send his poems to the magazines and he felt strengthened by the unexpected lull of this late autumn morning. He hurried to his favorite bench in the public square, one that he always occupied if it happened to be vacant when he passed. He had a shyly whimsical fancy--a last remnant of youth asserting itself within him--that his touch upon this bench stayed there while he was absent and gave a sense of invisible, prodding communion to other pilgrim-acrobats who occupied this seat at times--an abashed bit of sentimentality evading itself with an image. Filled with the alert meeting of hope and bitterness he wrote with a degree of fluid ease that had never visited him before, and for the first time his lyrics grazed a phrase or two that rumored recalcitrantly of a proud story known as beauty. In one attempted poem he asserted that an old, blind, Greek huckster on the side street of an American city had suddenly towered above the barrenly angular buildings, in a massive reincarnation of Homer, and he wrote in part: A purplish pallor stole Over your antique face-- The warning of a soul Rising with tireless grace. Rising above your cart Of apples, figs, and plums, And with its swelling art Deriding the city’s drums.