Gracious pores answered with respiration my over-thinking that wasn't convincing at all. I understand. –With you Doubt works from the morning until 11 at night, whereas Certainty doesn't work. Isn't that it? Multitudes: I, you, he, we. So many voices all stampeding through that single screen, the one with constant technical problems belonging to whom I call you.– ...And while being transformed into anacoluthon, the lagoon engulfed the Hyena.

Next step: What of the Hyena?, what of her cackle?, now not even in the darkest dreams admitted. Touch iron and stand pat while the beldame bounds upward abeam of the grackles, into the sunset. Grackles that, according to a sensible Sunday señora cresting at 500 feet, are to be dreaded. And while perhaps reasonable, the lady's misassertion confused me because when mixed amongst them

I am happiness, like a thought or a song rhymed assonantly. But there is still an hour until 11 and General En, your distrust of consonance tempts the mesmerizing limits and ruins of oneself.

Your chérie called you "the captain" and me a mere "sea man". Ink runs the ranks or jumps ship, and she must be the admiral, scribing verses while her memory's vines climb upwards. If we were all One, there'd be no trireme, whose punished sails traditionally stirred more fear in its day, señora, than any murder of grackles.

Gracias por la respuesta, aunque no me convenza del todo. Pero no te preocupes: hace ya un cierto tiempo que nada me convence del todo. Si sigo así terminaré convertido en un anacoluto, como me advirtió alguna vez la Hiena.

De paso: ¿qué será de la Hiena?, ¿qué será de sus jenízaros? Ya ni en las peores pesadillas aparecen. Toquemos madera sin patas y volvamos a levantar vuelo entre los grajos del atardecer. Grajos que, según me señaló el domingo pasado una muy crestomática señora, son de temer. Puede que la dama tenga razón, pero para mí no es cierto y cuando me confundo con ellos
soy tan feliz como cuando pienso y canto en rimas asonantes. Digo asonantes porque, en general, desconfío de las consonantes tanto como de mí mismo, que no soy más que límites y escombros.

Ya iba a dejar de escribir cuando me vino a la memoria un verso de Leopoldo Marechal: "Con el número Dos nace la pena". Me gusta recordarlo ahora para escándalo de los bienpensantes que me rodean, a quienes temo más que a los grajos.

Mythical. How dare you fumble about such tender texts with your long sword of ignorance! Mythical. Apart from being an alliterative alignment of alpha-bits, it meant little to María Elena, simply María Elena. "Get your own pantheon!" one needs to yell at him as he constantly stumbles over it... "like my pants at age six, embarrassed," interrupts Ginsberg.        Shh.        Let those soft words be, in peace, themselves and leave your funhouse mirror etymology out of such inconsolable silence.       Shh.       64-year friendships are hard to come by. 49-year friendships too.

Uncle Floro! Uncle Floro! That was his name! That epistle-packing ranger was real, Daisy!       Shh.        Yes, he existed and for some first person he always will; they frequently reunite at Neruda's place for poetry readings, the host having been his companion in Colonia Francia, half a country's length from those large coastal stadiums for horses and for bulls. We'll have time (oh no!) to reference his fascination with conversing passionately on country roads within the sun's nap-time hours or his ramblings in Parque Rodó below the moon's February brilliance.

Borges held: "El arte es un pequeño milagro." And Whistler's symphonies remind us of that. But today our first person followed that phrase about like a large mouse running on its wheel. And his thinking set not a word atremble. "How is that?" he asked. My answer: It's that you hear Whitman's multitudes within and you listen, kindly, not only to the loud ones, but to all of them.

Quizá María Elena sea, como dice Manning, "mítica", pero para nosotros siempre será, simplemente, "María Elena". Confiemos que llegue el día en que podamos hablar de mil y una cosas de ella, pero por ahora decidimos, desconsolados, hacer silencio. Limitémonos a recordarles, a los que nos conocen más, que la amistad ininterrumpida de Ida con María Elena se inició en Montevideo el año 1947 y la mía unos quince años después.

En cuanto al tío Floro, debemos aclararle a Margarita que sí existió y que, para mí, no dejará nunca de existir: por eso a veces me reúno con él para compartir la lectura de algún poema de las "Residencias", que tanto le acompañaran en sus largas estadías en Colonia Francia. Tiempo tendremos (¿o no?) de referirnos a sus fascinantes apasionadas conversaciones bajo el sol de las horas de la siesta y por un camino rural o bajo la luna de febrero y por la rambla del Parque Rodó.

Whistler señaló: "Art happens". Y a Borges le gustaba recordarlo. Pero hoy estuve un rato largo dándole vueltas a la frase y a las que le siguen y ahora no me atrevo a decir qué pienso de ella, de ellas. ¿Será que no sé pensar? ¿O será que no sé decir lo que pienso? ¿Cómo es eso, Manning?

Without proof, the previous text was the conclusion of an egregious day, Tuesday, the 11th of January in 2011, surpassed only by Tuesday, the 21st of December...

He had planned a transcription of the Enigmatic Man's venerable answers to the Interrogator when the clouds again turned to darkness. A darkness in silence. With haste Alfredo sent him a message about Amalia de la Vega that did him much good and rained solitude pleasantly upon his forehead. But not to worry, there will be not one reference to Morency's paroles nor Sara's horse nor you-know-whose yellow arrows of regrets.

Finning madly through a querulous pantheon of names, a legion of beloved shadows arose, their dormition's one obligation was for him to observe a variform silence for days. This silence, self-explanatory, rising above everyone, agreed to its own end by burning acacia for the year 2010 in hopes of deterring the looming demons dancing a hora for 2011.

Now he's no option but to segue into homage to his intimate friend and guide Guido with a new (sempre forte and passionate) reading of Aldana's epistolary hendecasyllables.

Time he harbors below a protective parasol of solar pondering, and for the umpteenth instance he'll tell Manning and the needles of this blog (lost in hay) how he met Aldo. Like Fierro who spoke eloquently in Manning's portfolio of betrayal, every New Year he's surrounded by more shadows than realities. Present are Juan Carlos Paz and José Viñals. Present are Felisberto Hernández and Juan Carlos Onetti. And the mythical María Elena Walsh sadly now present.