Monday, December 14, 2015

Little Language: December 12, 2015


My book, stuffed with phrases, has dropped to the floor.  It lies under the table, to be swept up by the charwoman when she comes wearily at dawn looking for scraps of paper, old tram tickets, and here and there a note screwed into a ball and left with the litter to be swept up.  What is the phrase for the moon?  And the phrase for love?  By what name are we to call death?  I do not know.  I need a little language such as lovers use, words of one syllable such as children speak when they come into the room and find their mother sewing and pick up some scrap of bright wool, a feather, or a shred of chintz.  I need a howl; a cry.  When the storm crosses the marsh and sweeps over me where I lie in the ditch unregarded I need no words.  Nothing neat.  Nothing that comes down with all its feet on the floor.  None of those resonances and lovely echoes that break and chime from nerve to nerve in our breasts, making wild music, false phrases.  I have done with phrases. 

The Waves

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