La Chorten, La Raziel, The Apparatus of Auditorium 13

My broken distorted eyebrows are in the mirror.
If only I had a doctor's certificate for today,
too, to go walk and walk forever around the Green Wall
and then come drop in the bed, down to the bottom of it...
But I've got to go to auditorium No. 13, I've got
to screw myself up tight, to sit through two hours,
two whole hours, not moving... when I need to scream
and stamp my feet.

A lecture. It's very strange that the gleaming apparatus
emits not the usual metallic voice but a kind of soft,
shaggy, mossy voice. A female voice. Her image as she was
in life flits before my mind's eye: a little bent old
woman, like that one at the Ancient House.