It is small and no more visible than a cricket in August. It likes to dress up, to masquerade, as all dwarfs do. It lodges between granite blocks, between serviceable truths. It even fits under a bandage, under adhesive. Neither customs officers nor their beautiful dogs will find it. Between hymns, between alliances, it hides itself. It camps in the Rocky Mountains of the skull. An eternal refugee. It is I and I, with the fearful hope that I have found at last a friend, am it. But the self is so lonely, so distrustful, it does not accept anyone, even me. It clings to historical events no less tightly than water to a glass. It could fill a Neolithic jar. It is insatiable, it wants to flow in aqueducts, it thirsts for newer and newer vessels. It wants to taste space without walls, diffuse itself, diffuse itself. Then it fades away like desire, and in the silence of an August night you hear only crickets patiently conversing with the stars.