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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