3 I besought the numbers to show me order, but they danced in achaos, like btumbling dice, and I shivered at each roll; but as I called the numbers, they breathed new cfrost upon my wall, and laid their dmeaning out for me.
4 One is the number of elonely hearts, who will multiply themselves alone, and one will stay the same.
5 Two is the number of love, which is a ffour-letter word, and will become a gfour-letter word, when a hlady will be laid, on a big brass bed.
6 Three is the number of imice and men, who will learn to be jblind, like the kfool on the hill, or lthe muse of the wise, who will never emerge from the mdark side of the moon.
7 Four is the number of apocalypse, which will be lamented nall along the watchtower, until a odark star gives pnew luster to the eve of destruction.
8 Five is the number of the qslaughterhouse, where the reasy riders will mock the sgood soldier, tfrom here to eternity.
9 uNine is the number of ultimate ice, which will bind up the vshattered with a strange love of wstill life.
10 Nineteen is the number of nervous breakdowns, which will ride the xmidnight express until there is yblood on the track, and the passengers are ztorn and frayed, and the sky is full of aapurple haze.
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11 bbTwenty-Two is the number of the cccatcher in the rye, who will hunker on the Cloister Road, with one ddsurrealistic pillow on his hand, and set a trap for the eenowhere man, two thousand and one light-years from home.
12 Forty-Five is the number of numbers, the dawn of a mellow yellow day, which will enter the fflimit and go for aride, helter-skelter to ggstrawberry fields.
13 Sixty-One is the number of the highway, from which a long black limousine will turn, bearing horsemen down a long and winding road, over the hhriver and through the trees, until they reach the iidarkness at the edge of town.
14 Sixty-Four is the number of jjpigs on the wing, and kings who will turn into cabbages, and little red oysters that will dine on feet.
15 Seventy is the number of nothing at all, the zero that disgorges a kkman of wealth and taste.
16 Eighty is the number of something from nothing, when the llbalow folk will find the mmsoldiers on the shelf, and pack them on the nntrain.
17 Eighty-Four is the number of oonightmares to come, ppand screams at the end of the night, when the crystal ship drowns in its qqbrave new world, and a locus called Kain unleashes the rrRaptor.
18 ssAnd I have counted these numbers again and again, and their sum is inanity, precisely, with nothing left over.
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