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The Consolation of Philosophy sounds promising: a smooth iambic title translated from late Latin down to us. Who wrote it? Severinus Boethius, before getting bludgeoned to death for consulting a rival of Theodoric the Ostrogoth, had time in prison to hang with Philosophy, be consoled, and leave word how. Though no Ostrogothic bolt bars my door, consolation is one thing I’m lacking, looking for, and almost thought I’d found when Boethius begins to grieve about his age and sentence. Then Philosophy steams in, overwrought (that I believe). She chills fast, from berserk to overtly officious bureaucrat of God, all catches and backtracks— maybe the consolation of paperwork, but not a metaphor that really hacks it in my book where Boethius must wait some fourteen hundred years for engines, rails, far-off train whistles, and an accurate 37 HadawayRevisedPages 8/15/06 3:09 PM Page 37 description of the Midnight Special, which they say frees prisoners with its headlight’s touch. The beam illuminates a roach, a smudge along the wall. The blanket! Then it’s missed. 38 HadawayRevisedPages 8/15/06 3:09 PM Page 38 ...

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