Mr. Cogito never trusted tricks of the imagination the piano at the top of the Alps played false concerts for him he didn't appreciate labyrinths the Sphinx filled him with loathing he lived in a house with no basement without mirrors of dialectics jungles of tangled images were not his home he would rarely soar on the wings of metaphor and then he fell like Icarus into the embrace of the Great Mother he adored tautologies explanations idem per idem that a bird is a bird slavery means slavery a knife is a knife death remains death he loved the flat horizon a straight line the gravity of the earth