Ennui
And here’s me, burdened with a pair of empty pockets, taking my ease on a day the devil himself wouldn’t expect a man to be working. There’s no shame in being poor, so the nuns at St. Agnes are telling me; the shame is in being idle. But it’s idle I am, idle and shameless, here as the sun lays itself down and all the decent and diligent people are looking at the untrustworthy office clock waiting for the bell to turn them loose.
My skint-wallet loafing is only laggardly on the outside. My body, bent between post and plinth, may be motionless but my eyes are not. I see the sun and shadows move, and I am moved in my turn by the slow solar elegance of the revolving earth. As meticulously as my betters monitor the minute-ticking office clock, I observe the sliding shadows. They see only the pathetic passing of the second hand; I witness the entire planet eternally rotating.
Look at the birds of the air, the nuns in their innocence taught me. Neither sowing nor reaping nor gathering, neither toiling nor spinning. Do the birds of the air watch the clock? Or do they watch the movement of shadows, with their idle hands thrust into lint-filled pockets? They could learn a bit from me, the nuns at St. Agnes, about the wee birds and slow spinning of the world beneath their practical feet.
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