He read a poem comparing
life to a short story —

seventy, eighty pages, at
best a novella the laur-

eate wrote. It was an eleven-
line poem, short and sweet.

The poet mentioned, rhetor-
ically, comically, that we

don’t get out of the mess
alive; all books end, but

he might be tempted to settle
for a mere eleven lines of

life if they all were short
and sweet and not a mess

or maybe that’s just wishful
thinking or poetic license.