Short of words, ninety-seven to go. Up from the well of our building’s back yard a yet-bare tree spines to the sky; out on the street the masked citizens parade in disquieting numbers of ones and twos, delayed carnival. I’ve gotten too used to the emptiness. Find my way to the beach to sit in the lifeguard’s empty chair watching gulls squabble, earbuds in, working through Beethoven’s changes to his Große Fuge, that unaccountable music. Following string quartets with a piano played four-handed, twenty fingers finding form for outlines of the void. How late things become: farewell to the flesh.