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‘Cerva ntes ransomed…’ Cervantes ransomed worked at pissant clerk jobs in Toledo. His non sword arm wouldn’t lift above the horizontal. In the roadside dust he undid and enjoyed a whole white onion. His saddlebag of purchase orders, timber, rope, tar, barrelled cheese in brine was being slit apart by two lunks who had no idea about the proper way to open saddlebags. He probably had some commission somewhere on his person which would clear things up. Right after he had finished with the onion. It clung behind his breath the way a proverb would, a double-edged or self-refuting proverb. 14
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he Su n Box for Emily There is a field somewhere which in forty years will be the corner of a carpark: yours will be the bay marked ‘Visitor’, since you are in the book, and may proceed directly to reception, one of several not too unattractive low white buildings. You are slightly early. Check in via the mandated ritual, whatever it may be now, and if there’s a sofa lounge on it, your escort has been called and will be coming presently to walk you through what might remind you of an out-of-term-time science campus – cafe not much used, odd clumps of postdocs, glimpsed through toughened glass summer-school students tending spindly arcana – until you come to what you’ve come to see, the small domestic sun suspended buzzing in the centre of whichever room from outside seemed most nondescript. My guess is it will be a disappointment, shielded in something opaque, offwhite and embossed with manufacturer’s logo, something you are asked to take on trust; inside meanwhile the miracle goes on, however dull, being a miracle. This is the best I think that I can offer you with any hopefulness: if not uninteresting times at least uninteresting objects: a tame sun hung from wires, I believe in it, 15

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he Su n Box for Emily There is a field somewhere which in forty years will be the corner of a carpark: yours will be the bay marked ‘Visitor’, since you are in the book, and may proceed directly to reception, one of several not too unattractive low white buildings. You are slightly early. Check in via the mandated ritual, whatever it may be now, and if there’s a sofa lounge on it, your escort has been called and will be coming presently to walk you through what might remind you of an out-of-term-time science campus – cafe not much used, odd clumps of postdocs, glimpsed through toughened glass summer-school students tending spindly arcana – until you come to what you’ve come to see, the small domestic sun suspended buzzing in the centre of whichever room from outside seemed most nondescript. My guess is it will be a disappointment, shielded in something opaque, offwhite and embossed with manufacturer’s logo, something you are asked to take on trust; inside meanwhile the miracle goes on, however dull, being a miracle. This is the best I think that I can offer you with any hopefulness: if not uninteresting times at least uninteresting objects: a tame sun hung from wires, I believe in it,

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