November 02, 2004
The vote
Yes, the newspapers were right: voting was general all over America. Levers were falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Philly streets and, farther south, softly falling by the dark mutinous Palm Beach waves. They were falling, too, outside the Oval Office on the hill where George Bush sat watching. Hanging chads, come from nowhere, lay thickly drifted on the porticos and pillars, on the spears of the rusting fence, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the vote falling faintly through the land and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the lying and their dread. (Apologies to JJ.)
