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Desert sand crept into my pocket watch near Timbuktu. The thing began to tell time in dunes. Noon arrived as a small hill. I crossed the Sahara by its reading and reached the coast a week before I left, which annoyed my banker and pleased my wife.

Portraits of me must be painted in two parts, as no canvas is large enough for my good qualities. The artist in Florence worked nine years. He got to my left ear before he ran out of blue. The finished ear hangs in a fine palace, and people bow to it.

Lanterns are no use to me on dark roads. I simply open one eye a bit wider. In Bosnia I lit up a whole valley that way and read a letter from my mother. Farmers took it for sunrise and began to plow. I shut my eye and left politely.

Frogs near Riga held a loud meeting under my window every June. I attended one and asked for the floor. My speech on silence ran six hours. The frogs elected me mayor and then fell asleep. That pond has been quiet since, apart from the odd croak when I am up for a vote.

Stars fall, as we all know, but few men catch one. I held out my dinner plate over Vienna.