Last Stories and Other Stories

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This is my final book. Any subsequent productions bearing my name will have been composed by a ghost. As I watch this world turn past my window, I wonder how I should have lived. Now that it seems too late to alter myself, I decline to complain; indeed, my only regret is that pleasure comes to an end. Wherever there is a rose, runs the ancient Gulistan, there is a thorn; and when wine is drunk there is a hangover; where treasure is buried there is a snake; where there is the noble pearl there are sharks; the pain of death follows the pleasures of life, and the delights of Paradise are hidden by a wall of ill. — This wall of ill, won’t you view it with me? Through my late father’s binoculars, its aggregates of bloody leaves resemble coral or scrambled eggs, all washed and blended by watercolor fogs. Now let’s step up to count vines and snakes! If you’ll kindly verify my tally, I promise to prove that for all its deadliness, our wall of ill remains no less green and delicious. To be stung by that poisonous creeper over there might even induce an orgasm; for its leaves bear undeniably precious speckles, and there appear to be vermilion dewdrops upon its urticating hairs. And don’t forget to lick Malkhut, the Unlighted Mirror! Some of you may decline, in keeping with the axiom: This shall not happen to Makso. But why not make the occasion a dress ball, should the hole in the ground prove wide enough?

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