All grimed with coaldust, they swing along the street with their dinner baskets and cans in their hands, chattering merrily.

The tender moments are fine for them as long as they don’t shake the other image of stern autocrat, driving a football machine, striking down a media question he doesn’t like with a Zeusian thunderbolt.

After the wind-tempest, when branches lie in crambles upon the clearings and neighbors at far distances phone down the foothills under the mountains to ask if all is well still, the answer is “Yes”

He wanders west as far as Memphis, a solitary migrant upon that flat and pastoral landscape.