‘No man is an island’; and no man wrote a truer word.
The human continent’s a reciprocity of need.
In his conceit we’re Europe: manor, clod or promontory.
Yet each piece of the continent, each man’s ‘part of the main’,
is governed by a monarch who divides and rules the brain
as reason, dreams and appetites contest supremacy.
No one of these prevails, nor yields. No truce will be agreed
until the bell which ‘tolls for thee’, and you hear not, is heard.