I
It rained the night that Miriam saw the poet die.  
    
It was a cold and bitter rain that clawed and stung the skin; the kind of rain which heralds the death of fall and winter’s anguished birth.  The rain rode upon a lashing wind, diving into cracks and gaps as if it were a malevolent harbinger of frigid doom.  Even when the tempest had blown itself out, the bitter cold remained and the battered asphalt became coated in the glaze of ice.  The night of the rain was as dark as any night could be within the concrete labyrinth of the city, a stygian blackness serrated by pinpoints of fluorescence.
    
A superstitious dread had kept Miriam inside all day, yet some macabre fascination drew her to the window of her studio apartment.  From the security of the second floor, she watched with near-contempt as the city’s people scurried past, exposed to the weather’s cold mercy.  Occasionally the wind would shake the panes but it could not reach her, safe and secure in her sanctum.  Even after night had come and the people were gone, Miriam still watched, bewitched by the stillness of the dark.
    
Miriam would remember later and wonder, for it was the Poet, not his assailant, who seemed at ease in the alley below her window.  His hair was long and unkempt but clean and vibrant, full of swirling life in the wind.  The brown locks danced forward to hide his face, reminding Miriam of a sheepdog.  The Poet was draped with a heavy overcoat, the unoccupied sleeves lifting and flapping in the wind.
    
The attack was a sudden, furious thing.  Once on a visit to her cousin’s farm, Miriam had watched a sparrow hopping across a meadow.  Suddenly there had been a whisper of sound and a flicker of blood.  The sparrow was gone and one of the large farm cats was loping lazily away.  This was the same--a quick explosion of violence then an anti-climactic silence.  Miriam’s conscious mind would later rationalize that the entire affair had occurred too fast for her to react but she knew that, even if she could, she would not have moved.  She watched, fascinated by the horror of it all and the brilliant flashing images:  the wavering purple fluorescence on the knife’s blade; the swirl of the Poet’s coat and the abrupt, growing darkness across the sweater beneath; the knife ripping across the Poet’s left cheek and right eye; blood arching to the alley’s wall like some abhorrent graffiti.  The Poet crumpled.  
    
With a mental wrench, Miriam broke from her daze.  She grabbed her coat and ran from the apartment down to the street.  Now the wind had its revenge, reminding her that beneath her coat she wore only a nightgown.  She tried to ignore it and ran to him, shaking from the cold.
    
Brilliant blue eyes regarded her and a tired voice spoke from the bundle of cloth and flesh.  “Forgive me for not standing.  As m’lady can see, I’m less than well.”
    
“You’re alive,” she gasped stupidly.
    
“You sound disappointed.”  He sighed.  “Alas not for long I fear.”
    
“I’ll get help,” Miriam squeaked and turned to run back into the building.
    
“No.”  The voice was firm.  “I die when I’m alone.”
    
“Who are you?” she asked.
    
“Poet.”  The voice was faint now; the brilliance in the eyes was fading.
    
“Let me get help,” she begged.
    
He ignored her.  He was speaking now in a low monotone, as much to himself as Miriam.  “All my life, the search, the road . . .  What is art?  Please, God, what is art?”
    
“You’ll be all right,” Miriam whispered.  “I’ll get help.”
    
“Wait.  What is the medium of God’s art?  To write, to sing, to paint, these are of men . . .”  He gasped in pain and tears slipped from his eyes to freeze on his cheeks.  “What is the medium of God?”
    
Miriam ran to call for help and, alone, the Poet died.  For weeks after, she would awake in a sweat.  In time she would almost, but not quite, forget.
    
For Miriam the years passed smoothly.  Children grew and her parents passed on.  She buried a husband and a son and watched a granddaughter grow.  And still, late at night when the wind rattled the panes, she remembered the Poet and wondered.

II
The winter’s chill had stolen into the library’s reading room in defiance of the laboring radiators.  The wind screamed for admittance but the athenaeum remained as it always had, a sanctuary for the metaphysical.  One such was Arin Gantz.  He sat curled sideways in a worn chair reading a battered copy of The White Muse.  The book was his own, purchased many years ago at a second-hand bookstore, but he still came to the library to read.  This was his place, the true home of his soul, and Graves was his mentor.
    
Arin glanced up at the wall clock and sighed.  He removed his glasses and folded them carefully.  He stood and stretched until he could feel the vertebrae in his back and neck creak.  Yawning, he slid book and glasses into a pocket in his oversized army-surplus coat.  The library would close soon and Arin needed to catch the bus back to his apartment.  He flipped the hair from his eyes and slung his coat around his shoulders, disdaining the sleeves.  He drew his face into a scowl and went to face the night.
    
Twenty-seven years in the city changes a man.  It inures him to pain and violence and sears away the compassion.  In his life, Arin had seen destruction and death and walked away without a second glance; but something was different this time.
    
He watched, frozen, fascinated, as the old woman started across the traffic and slipped.  When she regained her footing, she forgot to look, just stepped forward again.  Three seconds changes much on a winter street.  The car’s bumper crushed her hip and flipped her onto the hood.  The impact threw her head-first into the windshield then spun her to the pavement with a crack.
    
“Call an ambulance,” Arin yelled at the car’s driver as he ran to the woman and knelt by her side.
    
“Poet,” she whispered.
    
“You’re alive,” Arin said, startled.  To his surprise, she began to laugh.
    
“You should talk,” she replied and blood began to stream from her nose.
    
“I’ll get help,” he whispered.
    
“No, I die when I’m alone,” she insisted and he nodded in understanding.  The woman reached up a blood-covered hand and laid it against Arin’s cheek.  “How could we have been so blind?  It’s life, you know.”
    
He felt her stiffen.  When she did not relax he knew she was dead.

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