For me, Hayes is a poetic novelist of the rarest kind. It’s instructive to remember that he began as a poet, influenced by Hart Crane and William Carlos Williams, among others. Yet he doesn’t indulge in poetic prose of the kind that’s designated purple. He gives objects their proper names, as Williams does. He concerns himself with the difficulties of loving and being loved and eschews philosophical digressions about the state of the world. He looks at a man and a woman drinking martinis and smoking cigarettes and wondering where the hell they are going. I can’t get enough of his exquisitely cadenced “solicitous voice.”

—PAUL BAILEY

THE END OF ME

A young man seated at his table

Holds in his hand a book you have never written

Staring at the secretions of the words as

They reveal themselves.

—WALLACE STEVENS, The Lack of Repose

1

I crawled out of the bush away from the window and I began to run. My only safety lay in flight. If I stopped I’d howl. I knew I must not stop. The thing was in my gut. In my parched in my constricted throat. Humped raw cringing wounded to death I’d howl into the night. Affrighting these houses. These well-kept lawns. These softly polished pianos. The dens would shiver. Rugs cringe. If I stopped. If ever I let it out of me. This wounded this stricken animal. And I didn’t. I didn’t howl. I ran. I still wore my tennis shoes. And I didn’t howl.

The club was closed. I drove home. The house was dark. I kept saying to myself: You’re finished. This is the end of you. I wanted to stand in some empty place and beat my hands together. I wanted to crawl. I wanted to burrow. Walking seemed unnatural. Perhaps if I went on all fours it would not hurt so much.

The house stared at me. I knew it was no longer my house. But the most dreadful thing was that it was not unexpected. I had watched it come. It had been coming. Padding toward me. Even if I could not see it clearly and even if I had not believed it I had known it was coming. I was getting old. Was it all simply because I was getting old? One is discarded. The door closes that had always been open. The phone is silent that had always rung. Others are selected where before one had been selected. On the floor through the window with the unheard music he reached under the soft sweater and he unhooked her brassiere. I had not howled. I had run. I was finished.