The calm of evening arrives, the foreign planes have returned to their oceanic lairs, and the city burns quietly in the east.

My sons complain about sleeping with the animals. Desultory. I continue to contemplete the rosy fingered horizon, feel the popping warmth in my long suffering unblinking unabashed parietal eye. "Ah," I would love to say, "consider the alternative, the iron drones, the reddening sky, the cries of anguish from the ruins"

"We, anyway, animals" Is all I can produce. They draw each other's oily gaze and shrug. The world is too much with us— Who said that? Once I knew.

We sit on the edge of old mats, our misshapen feet in the hole by the fire. We have eaten the night's pot. Radish. Yam. We are silent for hours. The old woman sleeps, is asleep. The boys watch the fire and hate me. Wish me gone. The old woman and I will go to the mountains, the mountain, for them.

When the winter comes.

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A note from the author: "In Japan when old people 'go to the mountains' they go off to die."