The only tie-of-blood feeling that clings to me is of my warming and keeping-alive. And it is very feeble. It grows more feeble.
It is a trivial matter as I look at it universally.
But as I look at it earthlily: there would be an abnormalness, a lostness in one when the mother who bore her got from it at best but a small cool dislike.
It makes me feel humanly lost.
‘Lost’ is the shuddering life-long lonely word that brushes against me some nights and noons.
[Their voices]
To-morrow
EVERY day at half-past ten and half-past two I hear the high shrill sweet choric Voices of hundreds of children shaking the thin clear air.
A public school is but a block from here. The children rush out of it, a hilarious noisy crowd, for a few mid-morning and mid-afternoon minutes. So those minutes, from hearing their Voices day after day, and day after day, have become lyric to my inner-listening.