David Gergen frowned at the lather on his razorblade. He hopped down from his perch and began to search his trouser pockets hastily.

"Good grief," he cried thickly.

He came over to the gunrest and, thrusting a hand into Bert's upper pocket, said:

"Lend us a loan of your noserag to wipe my razor."

Bert suffered him to pull out and hold up on show by its corner a dirty crumpled handkerchief. David Gergen wiped the razorblade neatly. Then, gazing over the handkerchief, he said:

"The bard's noserag. A new art color for our Irish poets: snot green. You can almost taste it, can't you?"

He mounted to the parapet again and gazed out over Dublin bay, his fair oakpale hair stirring slightly.

"God," he said quietly. Isn't the sea what Algy calls it: a grey sweet mother? The snot green sea. The scrotum tightening sea. Epi oinopa ponton. Ah, Convy, the Greeks. I must teach you. You must read them in the original. Thalatta! Thalatta! She is our great sweet mother. Come and look."

Bert stood up and went over to the parapet. Leaning on it he looked down on the water and on the mailboat clearing the harbor mouth of Kingstown.

"Our mighty mother," David Gergen said.

And you all know where this came from I reckon. Joyce could see a hundred years into the future and into Holy MOAB. A man of incredible vision for being as blind as he was. Hmmm....well yaz..., that's as astute as you'll ever find me. The tide's going out and my cone is deflatting considerbley.....

Tweed (formerly the Artist known as Renoir McSweeney)