There lay the cat asleep on the bare gravel of the path, as if beds, rugs and carpets were unendurable. The leaves of the hollyhocks hung like half-closed umbrellas, the sap almost simmered in the stems, and foliage with a smooth surface glared like metallic mirrors. A small apple tree, of the sort called Ratheripe, grew just inside the gate, the only one which thrived in the garden, by reason of the lightness of the soil; and among the fallen apples on the ground beneath were wasps rolling drunk with the juice, or creeping about the little caves in each fruit which they had eaten out before stupefied by its sweetness. By the door lay Clym’s furze-hook and the last handful of faggotbonds she had seen him gather; they had plainly been thrown down there as he entered the house.

Find Planmantee. Somewhere he’s smiling like a half-opened tin. The books begin at the floor and continue to the ceiling as species do in Aristotle. They span the doors, in stacks crowd the closet, consume every corner, ring the radiator: four walls and a window full of als ob: models, fictions, phantoms, wild surmises, all the essential human gifts: dreams, preachments, poetry, and other marvels of misfeeling. There are books in the drawers, on the desk and table. Cheap. Fat. Tattered. Innocent. Grim, Piers Plowman. EIPHNH. Three Weeks. Céline. Alone. In disrepute. In mobs. I could not live in such proximity with any person. With Unamuno, the beautifully named, with Marlowe—yes. Aquinas. Schopenhauer, Galileo. Bede. Call each to me with a finger that tickles the top of the spine. They play into my hands like cards. They breed.

O giant me one ripe time;

the strength,

just once,

in one brief line,

to shake the sacred tree from whose thought-quickened

boughs oar earthly beauty hangs

till all the orchards of the world,

as though in a wind of sympathy,

let fall their fruit onto the apron of the ground,

for any deep sweet bite to make its momentary mouth

eloquent with the juice.

Willkommen dann, o Stille der Schattenwelt!

Zufrieden bin ich, wenn auch mein Saitenspiel

Mich nicht hinab geleitet; einmal

Lebt ich, wie Götter, und mehr bedarfs nicht.