An Anthology of Verse Written in and on Oklahoma

Throughout time, a single man has been born, a single man has died. To think otherwise is to be led into statistics, is to attempt the impossible. Something no less impossible than trying to add the smell of rain to the dream you dreamed the night before last. That man is Ulysses, Abel, Cain, the first man to make the stars into constellations, the builder of the first pyramid, the man who set down the hexagrams of the Book of Changes, the smith who carved runes on Hengest's sword, the bowman Einar Tamberskelver, Luis de Leon, the bookseller who fathered Samuel Johnson, Voltaire's gardener, Darwin on the deck of the Beagle, a Jew in the death chamber with time, you and I. A single man has died at Troy, at Metaurus, at Hastings, at Austerlitz, at Trafalgar, at Gettysburg. A single man has died in a hospital ward, on shipboard in bitter loneliness, in love's and habit's bedroom. A single man has seen the spreading dawn. A single man has felt on his tongue the coolness of water, the taste of fruits and flesh.