I bemoan for myself a simple life; a life that, for any man, would be satisfactory—insofar as he would hear soft, green leaves fluttering in a midsummer sky, away from any industry—away from Man. Insofar as he would feel like a boy, head in his mother’s lap, a mind absent of knowledge of death and sex, and capable of asking himself: is this not my Truest wish? And to answer himself without guile: it is as True as the shine of starlight…

… Insofar as he would see the little ducklings patter about the brown-tipped reeds of his favorite pond, dancing merrily and quacking with a silliness unbound! Yea, Insofar as his heart is gladdened at the very breath of Life, Insofar as his spirit is eternally ruffled in mirth by the hand of Love. How I am overwhelmed with this song of Innocence! How I wish to be this man, unmade from mankind; happy to be queer and alone, the strange woodsman, forever subject to the what-aboutnesses and the did-you-knows; a never-quite-explained, half-made-of-rumor sort of man; an always-a-story! An old wizardry wouldn’t be foreign to my likes and ilks, Insofar as I lope to this song! Ah, I will till the end of my days, and Lo! I hear the very flute in my dreams now! … Du-dah-du-du-du, the pretty he-Elf whistles to me. Is it cowardly to run away from the ledger of this city of mine? Or, to perhaps, wish for the days of kings and mythology and dwarves and unicorns? To run away in my travelling-coat, brushed with juniper and gentler things?

    Mmm, but when I set my eyes upon my he-Elf, I see his long oakheart hair; his flute-lips; his fair eyelashes; his intricate braids. My little-leaf! I wish to exist in non-existence, O I wish to become the very birch trees that see me a pitiful creature! I hear how my little-leaf awakens them, teaches them to talk, and to sing, and how I wish to be them!

    A babe, borne of Man and City, now a queer wizard, woodsman, a town blacksmith. But this is not me, yet I know not what I am beyond this. So I weep and I weep until suddenly all I saw was as through water, rippling and faint. Mine eyes, made dim with weeping, beheld my he-Elf so—this is when he comes to me. I kissed him beneath a goldenly-green willow tree one night. As I dare to walk the village pathways the old women cross themselves, as always, and then some boy asks why I speak so finely, why my tunic is weaved with silk, why I do not join the harvesters, as if I could explain to him: I once defiled my he-Elf under a willow tree on an unassuming night, and never have I recovered! I write myself an edict, red-stamped, as to never do so again.

    And thus never shall I, I think. For the willow when I pass it by has not flowered since, nor have I wept since, and my he-Elf admonishes me for such. And without his presence the stars above that fine meadow dim in their illustriousness… replaced by the oil-lampposts that tower ‘gloomingly’ over tilled-stoned-cobbled-refined roads. The night thick with dew cleaved me as plough cleaves earth in spring (or, rather, as it used to?): ‘tis not to wound, but to uncover that which has long lain buried.

    My Elf! O the great Tragedy of that kiss! Sweeter than elderflower, older than song, nothing breathes softly any longer. Instead … a rhythmic, mechanical thump-of-a-heart replaces the soft whispers of Breath, of Life. I look with heavy steps for my giddy ducklings but I find geese penned for slaughter. I speak to the trees but they no longer speak, or maybe they do, but I’ve forgotten the tongue without my Elf. I drink my nettle-tea beneath the same eaves as He and I once did so, humming his low whistles half-forgotten, but there is a dull metallic, copper noise of a New World that overcomes me. Horrors, Horrors! Where is my little-leaf? Where is my little-leaf?