To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.

Yes, yes, that was a good one. You could work out the mysterious couplets of that one for hours. Weakly, Bernard licked his lips. He tasted something like decay. He went on.

A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.

Oh, he knew a thing or two, did Crazy Bill.

He lay with his eyes closed, with his jaw slack, his mouth open. Every breath that left him came back again rancid. He was strangling on his own exhalations.

Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born,
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.

He hugged himself, but not tightly. He hadn’t the strength for that anymore. He simply held himself, cradled himself, rocked himself in clouds of debilitating nausea.

Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
Some are red and some are blue,
And some are filled with sticky goo.

“I can’t breathe,” he whispered. And for he did not know how long, he was lost to himself. In a sunlit territory of emerald grass and rapeseed of a brilliant yellow. Of music and a river dappled with sunshine. And there, ranged everywhere along the lea, naked bodies, sweet, round, white, reclining. A vision of the sons and daughters of Albion …

And then the coffin lid clapped down over him and he was in the blackness again, with the smell of himself rotting alive. And he shook and cried, and whispered, “Mother.”

And her voice answered him clearly: We are led to believe a lie …

Yes, yes, he thought, crushed under the sudden return of reality. Yes …

We are led to believe a lie
When we see not through the eye,
Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
Which doesn’t scan,
But there it am,
Which doesn’t rhyme,
But dying I’m,
So who gives a sod,
Which brings us to God,
And God appears, and God is light,
To those poor souls who dwell in night;
But does a human form display,
To those who dwell in realms of day.
For mercy has a human heart,
Pity, a human face …

But no, that was something else. Still Blake, but another poem.

Oh, what’s the difference, Harper, he thought. Leave me alone, for Christ’s sake. Let me go.

For Mercy has a human heart, she insisted to him,
Pity, a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.

He hugged himself, rocked himself in the blackness. Don’t tell me that, he thought. Don’t tell me that, you pedantic bitch, and leave me here. I’m dying. And I’m scared.

Mercy has a human heart, Bernard. A human heart. And Pity, a human face. And Love, the human form divine. Trust me on this.