But there came a morning in the clear coolness of autumn. Fanny’s eyes opened from sleep. Her body stretched on its back ... the warm thin bed ... her body less plump already measuring the bed ... the bed measuring the wall, soft cream ... the room ... windows behind their white mesh curtains thresholding, flaring, shouting out into the world, all new and terrible again in its old Pain ... came to her. Different! She lay. She could lie, eyes open, and the windows flared and led out, and there was the Pain of the congested world: yet she lay warm, stretched in her bed, and could bear it.
—It’s Sunday. O how good! It was long, back in the age that was separate by the Abyss, since she had lain awake in a sweet bed.—Why?
—There’s been a hairy monster sitting on my face!
The hair in my eyes, the fat and the stink and the bag
Glued on my mouth!...
Here was a clear gold morning, full of sun ... a morning mad to drink....—He squats there yet! Gold mornings made to drink, clear cool drinkable days. I’ll drink you yet, I’ll drink you yet. Sun-veined air, wine of the sun, I’ll have you!
—Find out the monster’s name: pull him, tweak him.
Find out his name and he’ll squeal away like a pig.
—O he is there. But I have sipped a morning.
She got out of bed ... dimness before her eyes and brow like a curtain before fire. The curtain became mist. She knew so yet it must be ... the mist quenched and quenched. Not all the fire! Never all the fire! In this way she got out of bed.
* * *
In her nightgown she stood by the open window, letting the cold air race through her. She looked at the Church, she did not feel the cold air save that there was sun in it. The Church did not race. It stayed there immovable. It was fixed somewhere under the spinning of her world ... where the Pain was also. Half naked by the open window and the Church, she took her Bible and opened it. She felt the Church a dull base on which the Bible was written: from which it leaped, it leaped in syllables of sun.
“When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God
Shouted for joy....”
She turned the pages. She saw: