would if I thought it wouldn’t destroy her entirely. Lin Yütang, indeed. Out. There’s no use trying to talk to librarians when they’re in that state. You could stand there for an hour telling them all you’ve read about Brigid and Wilgefortis and Agatha and Ursula and the maiden martyrs but all they think about is one word on one page of Lin Yütang. The People’s Park is behind the library. It’s a sunny day, the grass is dry, and I’m worn out begging for chips and putting up with librarians who get into a state over turgid and I’m looking at the clouds drifting above the monument and drifting off myself all turgid till I’m having a dream about virgin martyrs in bathing suits in the News of the World pelt- ing Chinese writers with sheeps’ bladders and I wake up in a state of excitement with something hot and sticky pumping out of me oh God my male organ of copulation sticking out a mile people in the park giv- ing me curious looks and mothers telling their children come over here love come away from that fella someone should call the guards on him. The  day  before  my  fourteenth  birthday  I  see  myself  in  the  glass  in Grandma’s sideboard.The way I look how can I ever start my job at the post office. Everything is torn, shirt, gansey, short pants, stockings, and my shoes are ready to fall off my feet entirely. Relics of oul’ decency, my mother would call them. If my clothes are bad I’m worse. No matter how I drench my hair under the tap it sticks out in all directions.The best cure for standing up hair is spit, only it’s hard to spit on your own head.You have to let go with a good one up in the air and duck to catch it on your poll. My eyes are red and oozing yellow, there are matching red and yellow pimples all over my face and my front teeth are so black with rot I’ll never be able to smile in my life. I have no shoulders and I know the whole world admires shoulders. When a man dies in Limerick the women always say, Grand man he was, shoulders that big and wide he wouldn’t come in the door for you, had to come in sideways.When I die they’ll say, Poor little divil, died without a sign of a shoulder. I wish I had some sign of a shoulder so that people would know I was at least fourteen years of age.All the boys in Leamy’s had shoulders except for Fintan Slattery and I don’t want to be like him with no shoulders and knees worn away from prayer. If I had any money left I’d light a candle to St. Francis and ask him if there’s any chance God could be persuaded to perform a miracle on my shoulders. 305