Then be silent.
You belong to the night.”
And again in the sunset everywhere men stood with lifted faces and hand, and women covered their faces and stood with bowed heads, all was changeless still for the moment of change.
Then the lighter drums suddenly beat, and people moved on into the night.
The world was different, different. The drums seemed to leave the air soft and vulnerable, as if it were alive. Above all, no clang of metal on metal, during the moments of change.
“Metal for resistance.
Drums for the beating heart.
The heart ceases not.”
This was one of Ramón’s little verses.
Strange, the change that was taking place in the world. Always the air had a softer, more velvety silence, it seemed alive. And there were no hours. Dawn and noon and sunset, mid-morning, or the up-slope middle, and mid-afternoon, or the downslope middle, this was the day, with the watches of the night. They began to call the four watches of the day the watch of the rabbit, the watch of the hawk, the watch of the turkey-buzzard and the watch of the deer. And the four quarters of the night were the watch of the frog, the watch of the firefly, the watch of the fish, the watch of the squirrel.