Читать книгу Painstaker - Jeffrey Galbraith - Страница 12

From an exhibit of eighteenth-century documents at the public library, Chelmsford, Mass.

All is vanity. The man who changed Bumside

to Burnside, afraid of himself, the protuberance of it,

hanging there for whoever

might use it to demean him or make dirty. In such cases,

the rubbed-out letters

shelter and shield, Lorenzo

rechristened Larry, in the daybreak

of state function:

Be it enacted, &c., as follows . . .

The magic is immediate. The new name a sandpaper

smoothing away bumps

and unsightly knobs—a flatline of your former self.

For others, before and after pictures

show no perceptible change, no clearing away of trees

or rocks from the rich, black soil. As in the case

of Micajah, who strangely

insisted on Morrill. What neighbor haunted him?

What hope of safety? What millstone

kept him just out of reach of the surface, that intoxication

of air that comes

from standing aloof, unknown, amid the rabble?