Sometimes it's about playing a poor hand well.

Storytelling and elegant style don't always go hand in hand.

And as we leave Donne and Walton on the shores of Metahemeralism, we wave a fond farewell to those famous chums of yore.

But romantic vision can also lead one away from certain very hard, ugly truths about life that are important to know.

From the window, above the clatter of pots and the slamming of cabinets, Francis was singing, as though it was the happiest song in the world: 'We are the little black sheep who have gone astray . . . Baa baa baa . . . Gentlemen songsters off on a spree . . . Doomed from here to eternity . . .

Anything is grand if it's done on a large enough scale.

...as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn't touch.