Sorry ... what was the question?

How could a man count up
his losses as if they were sheep
called up to ease the terrors
of an unimaginative insomniac,
one with a wool fetish, perhaps,
and too much time to fritter away
on idle thoughts and figments;
possibilities that might have been
but never were and never could be?

Do you weigh them in a cosmic balance,
totting up the gains against the losses

as if there might be a single answer:

forty-two, rosebud, pi, the square

of the hypotenuse or Tom Doniphon?

The trouble is you have to know

the question you need or want to ask

and then be brave enough to listen

while the unimagniable universe talks,

wholly indifferent at the best of times

to hollow men with less time left than

they realise ... and egos bigger by far

than the national debt of Mexico.

Even then, all you might discover is
who it was that shot Liberty Valance.
.