For breakfast a man must break an egg. Then not all the king's horses and all the king's men can do very much about it.
Past perfect the broken egg no longer breaks, a dead man no longer dies...
And as he spills the broken egg into a frying pan he murmurs, Ah, well, too bad about Humpty Dumpty...
From See Jack by Russell Edson. Copyright © 2009 by Russell Edson. Used by permission of University of Pittsburgh Press. All rights reserved.