***!!!The Battle of the Century!!!***

the handbills shrill, in searing orange-crimsons. Any century. 
There will always be these two opponents, circling for a throat-hold. 
Call them Plus; and Minus. Call them Void; and Matter 
(from before there even were "centuries," or any creatures 
capable of notching an antler into a lunar calendar). 
Sperm; and Ovary. Belief; and Doubt. Thrift; and Bounty. 
Steady-state; and Ever-expanding. Curse; and Blessing. Versus 
is the only engine possible under the physical laws of our universe. 
Slyly hip to this most elementary of verities, 
the carny barkers are briskly pitching the wonders 
of that asterisk-heralded titular battle scheduled for noon 
in the center tent, twixt Dragon Sam, the Great Exhaler 
of Gouts of Amazing Flame (whose claim 
was, he could "conflagrate to the length 
of four bull elephants trunk-to-tail," and for a coda 
"thrust a white-hot coal inside his fundament, as a suppository"); and 
Liquid Dan, the Living Geyser, Fountain of Fantastic Feats 
(and who, in fact, could down one hundred mugs, then spout 
a grandly arching shower into a silver basin twenty feet away, 
"and you will see this stream change into a series of rainbow colors"). 
Fire; and Water. The ancient story. And so 
the tent can barely hold the crowd. 
And isn't this—because it's 1800—just a sideshow version 
of the clash between the Neptunists and the Vulcanists 
at scholarly colloquia? Such contumely 
heaped like buckets of rhinoceros dung by stammering men of letters 
over one another's anger-reddened heads! 
… will clearly demonstrate, for all time, and beyond all skepticism" 
[here, a glare of poison spear—tips at his colleague with the whiskers] 
"that the agents of geological change have been—since the Creation, 
to the Present Day—the rising and recession of the Waters,  
and the work of Rain and of Rivers upon the land. 
As to the specious, vapid, dunce-expounded theory 
of the primacy of' [forcing out a jackass laugh] "volcanic action 
evidenced at all …." [Rah! Rah! and Bah! go soak 
your beanbrain in your Waters! and Tell them, Chauncey!] 
at which, the bewhiskered proponent of Lava and Magma leaps up 
to the podium, as heated as his subject, and: "You demonstrate 
the intellect of a tuber!" [Huzzah! and also some Boo! and a single 
Let them go at each other with rowboat oars!] "The work, 
the immemorial work, of the Fires …." "Charlatan!" "Pestilential lout!" 
[and then it all breaks down beneath the weight of assorted professorial 
catcalls, thrown tomatoes, hoots, and mooshed-in noses]— 
Scene: A Farmer; and a Cattleman. 
Monotheism; and Pantheon. Electric; and Acoustic. There will always be 
the bringing forth of Light, from Dark, and then a cosmos built 
on that division. There will always be two sixteen-year-old lovers 
screwing madly, for the contrast, on top of a grave. 
Scene: He's back at the house, from the pasture. There's 
this moment in his day—the sheep are tallied-up, and penned; 
the silo, locked; the children, safely, even quietly, 
at their various indoors busyness—when everything seems to fit 
foursquare in its own ordained container, and the sky is the color 
a rose is, and the dusk against his face is like another face, 
familiar, soft. And then—what does it? a kind of sound? 
some reminiscent whiff?—he has an image of the cattle ranchers 
surging over everything, and suddenly aversion is a sickness 
in his belly, is a taste, and hatred roils through his forehead 
from a place in him so deeply lodged in Time, there aren't solids yet, 
or sentience, and protein wars with protein. 

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