IN LOVE WITH ALL THE MUSES

I have two friends ... one of them reads between ten and twenty books at the same time most all of them nonfiction ... the other reads one book at a time ... they both read the same number of books each year ... in fact they read the same books each year ... the multibook reader the polybibliophile has been my close you may say my intimate friend for over six decades ... I've never met the other ... my close friend detests the thought he must be a dilettante down to the dilettantish spelling of the word ... my other friend whom I love for the sake of my first friend tries to keep that poor fellow from the worst consequences of the charge ... which are internal to the vice if vice it be ... but for all I can see he has failed completely ... my promiscuous friend keeper of the harem of books wanders from room to room as it were ... opens each door onto a landscape peculiar to each thought that brought him to the room ... touches her light hair ... kisses the skin of her shoulder ... inhales the fragrance of her discourse ... and is lost in her ambient sunshine ... in her sad toilsome ways ... how can the other ... my friend Alio ... save him