they did not venture the profession of humility. The polished wedge that might have split the firmament was dumb. At last it threw itself away and falling down, conferred on some poor fool, a privilege.
Taller by the length of a conversation of five hundred years than all the others, there was one, whose tales of what could never have been actual— were better than the haggish, uncompanionable drawl
of certitude; his by- play was more terrible in its effectiveness than the fiercest frontal attack. The staff, the bag, the feigned inconsequence of manner, best bespeak that weapon, self protectiveness.
THE FISH
wade through black jade. Of the crow-blue mussel shells, one keeps adjusting the ash heaps; opening and shutting itself like
an injured fan. The barnacles which encrust the side of the wave, cannot hide there for the submerged shafts of the
sun, split like spun glass, move themselves with spotlike swift- ness into the crevices— in and out, illuminating
the turquoise sea of bodies. The water drives a wedge of iron through the iron edge of the cliff, whereupon the stars,