February 4
A livid flower, trembling, adjusts itself to midnight, lit by phosphorous. A hurrying home of little men to the theatre for excitement, carnival time all night, always a pleasure, no limit to the marvels they’ve amassed, to the affirmation of life, to what they’ve done to men lately, that familiar species perishing in slaughterhouses and pawnshops, endless waves of useless beings drawn into the whirlpool, forced by blows, a smile, something resembling a terrible word, obliged to abandon pleasure and the needs of the flesh, forced to have exhausted the hope of intimate revelations. Passionately to abandon the place from a distance, because of the flame. The brush without the hand. The stars, obedient to the last command, go slow and banish us, evict us, expose us, put the heart abroad in spite of winter. Into the heartless and frivolous outer world in this fatal hour. Into an enthusiastic submission to the natural feverish haste of the machinery, scattered instantly into ghosts, in darkness, in a bit of light which ends in darkness, all of us drifting deeper and deeper into the night.
Hills, trees, frozen boats, ditches, vines, trinkets. The worm-eaten stones of the church, sacrificed for science. The cellar and its occupants. Incidents, stories, among others. Little cradles of shadow. Covered by science and surgery. Scars in the corneas. The drift and deposit. A whole province thus divided and given these purely physical limitations, all the foolish waste of it, natural exhaustion robbing history. Prayer an implement denied, stifled in the storm and stress and failed before the snows.
Ghosts assembled over cities at night, the tenantless palaces which in their ruins astound us. The long, naked, whistling finger of gas climbing back into the veins. The material reinstatement of the modern world. Chained and dangerous ecstasy which never ends.
It drenched the whole world.
There lay the days between, the territory not yet consumed. Till it be night no more. And then the windows failed. Condemned to see, because escape is done.
A livid flower, trembling, adjusts itself to midnight, lit by phosphorous. A hurrying home of little men to the theatre for excitement, carnival time all night, always a pleasure, no limit to the marvels they’ve amassed, to the affirmation of life, to what they’ve done to men lately, that familiar species perishing in slaughterhouses and pawnshops, endless waves of useless beings drawn into the whirlpool, forced by blows, a smile, something resembling a terrible word, obliged to abandon pleasure and the needs of the flesh, forced to have exhausted the hope of intimate revelations. Passionately to abandon the place from a distance, because of the flame. The brush without the hand. The stars, obedient to the last command, go slow and banish us, evict us, expose us, put the heart abroad in spite of winter. Into the heartless and frivolous outer world in this fatal hour. Into an enthusiastic submission to the natural feverish haste of the machinery, scattered instantly into ghosts, in darkness, in a bit of light which ends in darkness, all of us drifting deeper and deeper into the night.
Hills, trees, frozen boats, ditches, vines, trinkets. The worm-eaten stones of the church, sacrificed for science. The cellar and its occupants. Incidents, stories, among others. Little cradles of shadow. Covered by science and surgery. Scars in the corneas. The drift and deposit. A whole province thus divided and given these purely physical limitations, all the foolish waste of it, natural exhaustion robbing history. Prayer an implement denied, stifled in the storm and stress and failed before the snows.
Ghosts assembled over cities at night, the tenantless palaces which in their ruins astound us. The long, naked, whistling finger of gas climbing back into the veins. The material reinstatement of the modern world. Chained and dangerous ecstasy which never ends.
It drenched the whole world.
There lay the days between, the territory not yet consumed. Till it be night no more. And then the windows failed. Condemned to see, because escape is done.
posted by Scott MacLeod at 5:48 PM
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