“I read about this man in Minnesota who got mad because he got a black man’s heart. He’s suing the hospital.”

“That’s about par for the course. Why would anyone mind a black man’s heart? Some huge sweet black heart beating out the rhythms of another continent. Nobody in the United States wants to have any fun anymore. What a bunch of pussies.”

“My doctor won’t believe I’m not afraid to die. He doesn’t understand me, Dee, but I fascinate him, I think. He tried to talk me into a transplant. He was begging me to do it at one point.”

“I’m not afraid of dying anymore. I believe in DNA, Charles William. That’s the only immortality.”

“I believe in art, Dee. Five hundred years is a long time. I’m tiling the entrance to Eula’s old house. I wish you could see it. It’s like a mosque. I’m putting mandalas everywhere.”

“Don’t die, Charles William. Please don’t die on me.”

“I’ll try not to. I probably won’t. I think I’ll get a better report tomorrow.”

But of course he didn’t and his great heart heaved and stopped and now I can’t call him up and read him this and see if it makes him laugh and, as the poet wrote, that makes all this difference.

“The deep blue sky was flecked with clouds of a blue deeper than the fundamental blue of intense cobalt, and others of a clearer blue. … In the blue depth the stars were sparkling, greenish, yellow, white, rose, brighter, flashing more like jewels . . . opals you might call them, emeralds, lapis, rubies, sapphires.” Vincent Van Gogh, Aries, 1888