Sprinkle it.
March 21, 1616
Now that I am sick, it seems so rare a thing I once climbed elms for rook’s nest and slashed all afternoon, in the August sun, to scythe the timothy in rows. I was fifteen, I think it was. Larks flew and sang. I liked the click-a-click of my scythe as it bladed. Crickets chirped. Magpies and jackdaws took the air. There was a kingfisher diving.
I long to dive where I used to swim, at Gray’s pool, alongside the burned mill; I used to strip and plunge off the sluice, after working in the field. Or we used to swim there—five or six of us—and test who could stay under longest, test—what was it I wanted to test?
Cowslips grew cap-a-pie on two sides of that pool and their cinque-spotted faces got trampled underfoot as we dashed nakedly about, lewdly knuckling each other’s penis. Banks of violets were thick on the shady side of the mill, thickest among heaps of smashed and rotting shingles...her favorite flower! Hers!
Home
Suppertime
Getting ready to die is looking across a stage through semi-darkness; it is muffing one’s lines; it is listening to incomprehensible promptings; it is taking the wrong exit. It is tampering with the plot, eliminating the star from the best scenes, substituting a beginner. Getting ready to die is watching the candle gutter, hearing the rooster before dawn, saying love’s good-bye; it is the footstep on the stair, the reveled, sleeved and broken sword.