A few companions had been doing too much talking beside the purple water. The troupe, panic-stricken, ran away, and I found I was incapable of following them. I stepped into the water and the depths turned luminous; faraway ferns could just be seen. The reflections of other dark plants stopped them rising to the surface. Red threads took on all sorts of shapes, caught in the invisible and doubtless powerful currents. A plaster-cast woman advancing caused me to make a gesture which was to take me far.
The whole of human history seems to be the story of men who kill, and of men who are killed; of murderers who light their cigarettes with trembling hands,
So it did not come as a surprise—a relief, almost—when we heard the tac-tac-tac of machine guns and the thud of grenades rising up from the woods below. The Germans were advancing again through the tangle of bomb-shattered branches, clearing a path with axe-blows, foreheads crushed beneath the overhang of great steel helmets, gleaming eyes fixed dead ahead. The rest of that day was bitter, and many of us fell forever headlong in the grass. But toward evening the voice of battle began to diminish, and then from the depths of the forest we could hear the song of the wounded: the serene, monotonous, sad-hopeful song of the wounded, joining the chorus of birds hidden in the foliage as they welcomed the return of the moon. It was still daylight, but the moon was rising sweetly from behind the forested mountains of Reims.
It was green against a white and tender sky…
A moon from the forest of Ardennes, a moon from the country of Rimbaud, of Verlaine, a delicate green moon, round and light,
Light from the ugliest lamp I ever saw, here on the table that triples for reading, eating (can’t say dining), business on the phone; ugliest except a few around the corner in that guest house at windows
—plaster driftwood; cylinders like rockets or sanitary napkins propping shades; thin torso of a youth; red globe on orange globe, the works, somebody’s collection. Wouldn’t she love this one, lump of lamp base
His mother stepped about her kitchen, complaining in a low voice; all day his father sat stooped at a sewing machine. When he went to high school Webber was in his class. Webber lived in a neighborhood where the houses are set in lawns with trees beside the gutters. The boys who live there, after school, take their skates and hockey sticks and play in the streets until nightfall.
The farmhouses north of Driggs, silos for miles along the road saying BUTLER or SIOUX. The light saying rain coming on, the wind not up yet, animals waiting as the front hits everything on the high fiats, hailstones bouncing like rabbits under the sage. Nothing running off. Creeks clear.
As he spoke we could hear, ever more loudly, the noise Of the burning fires; the flood of flames was coming Nearer and nearer. “My father, let me take you Upon my shoulders and carry you with me. The burden will be easy. Whatever happens, You and I will experience it together, Peril or safety, whichever it will be. Little Iülus will come along beside me. My wife will follow behind us. And you, my servants, Listen to what I say: just as you leave The limits of the city there is a mound, And the vestiges of a deserted temple of Ceres, And a cypress tree that has been preserved alive For many years by the piety of our fathers. We will all meet there, though perhaps by different ways
On a road through the mountains with a friend many years ago I came to a curve on a slope where a clear stream flowed down flashing across dark rocks through its own echoes that could neither be caught nor forgotten it was the turning of autumn and already the mornings were cold with ragged clouds in the hollows long after sunrise but the pasture sagging like a roof the glassy water and flickering yellow leaves
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