Rudimentary Peni

It seemed like a damn futile business to keep on living.
No more tutors - high school next September which would
probably be a devilish bore,
since one couldn't be as free and easy as one had been
during brief snatches at the neighbourly Slater Avenue
school...Oh hell! Why not slough off consciousness
altogether?...The whole life of man was a mere cosmic
second -so I couldn't be missing much.
The method was the only trouble.
I didn't like messy exits,
and dignified ones were hard to find.
Really good poisons were hard to get -those in my chemical
laboratory (I reestablished this institution in the
basement of the new place) were crude and painful.
Bullets were spattery and unreliable.
Hanging was ignominious. Daggers were messy unless
one could arrange to open a wrist in a bowl of warm
water -and even that had its drawbacks despite good
Roman precedent. Falls from a cliff were positively
vulgar in view of the probable state of the remains.
Well what tempted me most was the warm,
shallow reed-grown Barrington River down the east shore
of the bay. I used to go there on my bicycle and look
speculatively at it. (That summer I was always on my
bicycle wishing to be away from home as much as possible
since my abode reminded me of the home I had lost).
How easy it would be to wade among the bushes and lie
face down in the warm water till oblivion came.
There would be a certain gurgling or choking unpleasantness
at first, but it would soon be over.
Then, the long, peaceful night of non-existence.
.. What I had enjoyed from the mythical start of eternity
till the 20th of August 1890.
More and more I looked at the river on drowsy sun-golden
summer afternoons. I liked to think of the beauty of
the sun and blue river and green shores and distant
white steeple as enfolding me at the last -it would
be as if the element of mystical cosmic beauty were
dissolving me, and yet certain elements -notably scientific
curiosity and a sense of world drama- held me back.
Much in the universe baffled me,
yet I knew I could pry the answers out of books if
I lived and studied longer.
Things have learned to walk that ought to crawl.