1. PROLOGUE

1. PROLOGUE

1. PROLOGUE

When he had gathered all the books

When he had indexed, catalogued, cross-referred and annotated them
When the little princelings and mighty emperors of China
Were dancing on the pinhead of his own estimable head
And the bile of the world was swimming in the gutters
And the fists of the janitor were beating street girls black and blue
And the oleaginous salesman had lubricated the hinges of the cassone
For the delectation of the housekeeper
A tiny gale started blowing
Down the alleyways and through the portals
Through the flightless windows
Through the wainscoted corridors of the rathaus
And the Groszbeggars stirred and shook a leg
And the Dixwounded rattled their small change of limbs
And acrobats stood on their heads like stars
And there were murders
Murders and conspiracies
For the intellect to catalogue and classify
For the mind to annotate and the fingers to cross-refer
For a superior consciousness to make sense of
In the hallways and beer cellars
In the prisons and surgeries
In lavatories and libraries

Where the books were gathered.