Diary of a Bad Year After J.M. Coetzee   It is, I know, on a night such as this, as warm and clear as this, as starlit, that a man as old as this, as creased and time-beaten as this, teeth worn from chewing modernity’s iron tits, begins to imagine sitting here, that erogenous muse—you remember the fantasy—all curves and empathy beside you here on such a night: how masculine, how patriarchal a dream, propriety forgiven for fantasy, that you could sit here together under the stars, youth and age, survival and beauty this still night, such quiet you may…