Billeter’s persistent tout in “Is it so quiet here?” is the dead-pan hammock of assertions, commenting on the stillness of the land: “To speak into such a stillness is to blemish it”; and “Words fall into these sounds as fallen bodies” (all uttered in Billeter’s heavy dulciloquent Swiss accent, the dragée for the surface seriousness), the latter supposing a primeval state of tranquil sonancy[…]

I kicked him in the nuts.

a nonliquid substance

Take away those chauffeurs, those gasoline coupons, those platoons of pencil-skirted, lozenge-spectacled assistants.