She recognized him at once; he was the only Ninja in all of Belgium, and he sulked his way through the rain down the main boulevard, looking less like a ninja then a dejected schoolboy in November.
…The little dog started barking, its owner had left it tied up in the rain, and it was beginning to take on the look of a drowned rat—she was pulled from the haze of memory into the very real, and surreal moment of staring a goat straight in the face.
Wherefore art thou, goate? The diuell..dooth most properlie and commonlie transforme himselfe into a gote. –R. Scott. ‘Discov. Witchr.’ v.i.89. (1584) If you’re short of trouble, take a goat. –Finnish saying The goat and the sheep, two animals locked in perpetual binary harmony. Like some star system, they graze together, but in realms beyond their [...]
As the goats, That late have skipt and wanton’d rapidly Upon the craggy cliffs, ere they had ta’en Their supper on the herb, now silent lie And ruminate beneath the umbrage brown, Upon his staff, and leaning watches them: And as the swain, that lodges out all night In quiet by his flock, lest beast of prey Disperse them: even so all three abode, I as a goat, and as the shepherds they, Close pent on either side by shelving rock.[^comedy] [^comedy]:From The Divine Comedy, “ Purgatory.
…So thought I,—but among us trod A man in blue, with legal baton, And scoffed the vagrant demigod, And pushed him from the step I sat on. Doubting I mused upon the cry, “Great Pan is dead!”—and all the people Went on their ways:—and clear and high The quarter sounded from the steeple.[^he steeple] [^he steeple]:Edmund Clarence Stedman, “Pan in Wall Street.” From Yale Book of American Verse.
Like the goat, you’ll mourn for your beard.
…If you think that to grow a beard is to acquire wisdom, a goat is at once a complete Plato.
