Latest / F. Scott Fitzgerald Classics Podcast / House of Dust A Symphony - Conrad Aiken

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House of Dust A Symphony - Conrad Aiken · F. Scott Fitzgerald Classics Podcast

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  Speaker 1: Part one of the House of Dust a Symphony. This
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  Speaker 1: is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
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  Speaker 1: public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox dot org. Recording by Expatriate in bangor Main The
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  Speaker 1: House of Dust, a Symphony by Conrad Aiken, Part one,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Section one. The sun goes down in a cold, pale
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  Speaker 1: flare of light. The trees grow dark, the shadows lean
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  Speaker 1: to the east, and lights wink out through the windows.
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  Speaker 1: One by one. A clamor of frosty sirens mourns at
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  Speaker 1: the night. Pale slate, gray clouds whirl up from the
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  Speaker 1: sunken sun, and the wandering one. The inquisitive dreamer of dreams,
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  Speaker 1: the Eternal Asker of Answers, stands in the street and
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  Speaker 1: lifts his poems for the first cold ghost of rain.
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  Speaker 1: The purple lights leap down the hill before him. The
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  Speaker 1: gorgeous night has begun again. I will ask them all.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: I will ask them all their dreams. I will hold
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  Speaker 1: my light above them and seek their faces. I will
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  Speaker 1: hear them whisper, invisible in their veins. The Eternal Asker
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: of Answers becomes as the darkness, or as a wind
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  Speaker 1: blown over a myriad forest, or as the numberless voices
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  Speaker 1: of long drawn rains. We hear him and take him
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  Speaker 1: among us, like a wind of music, like the ghost
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  Speaker 1: of a music we have somewhere heard. We crowd through
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  Speaker 1: the streets in a dazzle of pallid lamplight. We pour
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  Speaker 1: in a sinister wave, ascend a stare with laughter and cry,
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  Speaker 1: and word upon murmured word, We flow, We descend, We turn,
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  Speaker 1: and the eternal dreamer moves among us like light, like
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  Speaker 1: evening air. Good night, good night, good night. We go
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  Speaker 1: our ways. The rain runs over the pavement before our feet.
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  Speaker 1: The cold rain falls, the rain sings. We walk, we run,
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  Speaker 1: we ride, We turn our faces to what the eternal
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: evening brings. Our hands are hot and raw with the
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  Speaker 1: stones we have laid. We have built a tower of
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  Speaker 1: stone high into the sky. We have built a city
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  Speaker 1: of towers. Our hands are light, they are singing with emptiness.
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  Speaker 1: Our souls are light. They have shaken a burden of hours.
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  Speaker 1: What did we build it for? Was it all a dream?
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  Speaker 1: Ghostly above us in lamp light, the towers gleam, and
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  Speaker 1: after a while they will fall to dust and rain,
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  Speaker 1: or else we will tear them down with impatient hands,
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  Speaker 1: and hew rock out of the earth and build them again.
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  Speaker 1: Section two. One from his high bright window in a tower,
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  Speaker 1: leans out as evening falls, and sees the advancing curtain
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  Speaker 1: of the shower, splashing its silver on roofs and walls.
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  Speaker 1: Sees how swift as a shadow it crosses the city
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  Speaker 1: and murmurs beyond far walls to the sea, leaving a
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  Speaker 1: glimmer of water in the dark canyons, and silver falling
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: from eve and tree. One from his high bright window,
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: looking down, peers like a dreamer over the rain bright town,
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  Speaker 1: and thinks its towers are like a dream. The western
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  Speaker 1: windows flame in the sun's last flare, pale roofs begin
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  Speaker 1: to gleam. Looking down from a window high in a wall,
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  Speaker 1: he sees us all lifting our pallid faces towards the rain,
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  Speaker 1: searching the sky, and going our ways again, standing in doorways,
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  Speaker 1: waiting under the trees. There in the high bright window,
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  Speaker 1: he dreams and sees what we are blind to, we
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  Speaker 1: who mass and crowd from wall to wall. In the
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  Speaker 1: darkening of a cloud, the gulls drift slowly above the
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  Speaker 1: city of towers, over the roofs to the darkening sea.
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  Speaker 1: They fly night falls swiftly. On an evening of rain,
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  Speaker 1: the yellow lamps wink one by one again, the towers
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  Speaker 1: reach higher and blacker against the sky. Section three one,
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  Speaker 1: where the pale sea foamed at the yellow sand with
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  Speaker 1: wave upon slowly shattering wave. Turned to the city of
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  Speaker 1: Towers as evening fell, and slowly walked by the darkening
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  Speaker 1: road toward it, and saw how the towers darkened against
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  Speaker 1: the sky, and across the distance heard the toll of
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  Speaker 1: a bell. Along the darkening road, he hurried alone with
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  Speaker 1: his eyes cast down, and thought how the streets were
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  Speaker 1: hoarse with a tide of people, with clamor of voices,
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  Speaker 1: and numberless faces. And it seemed to him of a
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  Speaker 1: sudden that he would drown here in the quiet of
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  Speaker 1: evening air, these empty and voiceless places. And he hurried
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  Speaker 1: towards the city to enter there, along the darkening road,
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  Speaker 1: between tall trees that made a sinister whisper loudly he
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  Speaker 1: walked behind him, sea gulls dipped over long gray seas
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  Speaker 1: before him. Numberless lovers smiled and talked, and death was
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  Speaker 1: observed with sudden cries, and birth with laughter and pain,
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  Speaker 1: and the trees grew taller and blacker against the skies,
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  Speaker 1: and night came down again. Section four. Up high black walls,
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  Speaker 1: up somber terraces, clinging like luminous birds, to the sides
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  Speaker 1: of cliffs. The yellow lights went climbing towards the sky
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  Speaker 1: from high black walls, gleaming vaguely with rain. Each yellow
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  Speaker 1: light looked down like a golden eye. They trembled from
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  Speaker 1: coin to coin, and tower to tower, along high terraces,
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  Speaker 1: quicker than dream. They flew, and some of them steadily glowed,
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  Speaker 1: and some soon vanished, and some strange shadows through and
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  Speaker 1: behind them. All the ghosts of thoughts went moving, restlessly,
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  Speaker 1: moving in each lamp lit room, from chair to mirror,
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  Speaker 1: from mirror to fire. From some the light was scarcely
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  Speaker 1: more than a gloom. From some a dazzling desire. And
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  Speaker 1: there was one beneath black eaves who thought combing with
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  Speaker 1: lift it arms her golden hair of the lover who
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  Speaker 1: hurried towards her through the night. And there was one
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  Speaker 1: who dreamed of a sudden death as she blew out
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  Speaker 1: her light. And there was one who turned from clamoring
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  Speaker 1: streets and walked in lamp lit gardens among black trees,
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  Speaker 1: and looked at the windy sky, and thought with terror
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  Speaker 1: how stones and roots would freeze, and birds and the
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  Speaker 1: dead bough's cry. And she hurried back as snow fell,
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  Speaker 1: mixed with rain, to mingle among the crowds again, to
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  Speaker 1: jostle beneath blue lamps along the street, and lost herself
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  Speaker 1: in the warm, bright, coiling dream with a sound of
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  Speaker 1: murmuring voices and shuffling feet. And one, from his high
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  Speaker 1: bright window, looking down unluminous chasms that cleft the basalt town,
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  Speaker 1: hearing a sea like murmur, rise, desired to leave his dream,
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  Speaker 1: descend from the tower, and drown in waves of shouts
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  Speaker 1: and laughter and cries. Section five. The snow floats down
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  Speaker 1: upon us, mingled with rain, It eddies around pale lilac lamps,
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  Speaker 1: and folds down golden, windowed walls. We were all born
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  Speaker 1: of flesh in a flare of pain. We do not
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  Speaker 1: remember the red roots whence we rose, but we know
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  Speaker 1: that we rose and walked, that after a while we
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  Speaker 1: shall lie down again. The snow floats down upon us.
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  Speaker 1: We turn, We turn through gorges filled with light, We
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  Speaker 1: sound and flow. One is struck down and hurt. We
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  Speaker 1: crowd about him, we bear him away, gaze after his
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  Speaker 1: listless body. But whether he lives or dies, we do
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  Speaker 1: not know. One of us sings in the street, and
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  Speaker 1: we listen to him. The words ring over us like
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  Speaker 1: vague bells of sorrow. He sings of a house he
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  Speaker 1: lived in long ago. It is strange. This house of
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  Speaker 1: dust was the house I lived in, the house you
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  Speaker 1: lived in the house at all of us snow in,
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  Speaker 1: coiling slowly about him, and laughing at him, and throwing
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  Speaker 1: him pennies. We bear away, a mournful echo of other
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  Speaker 1: times and places, and follow a dream, a dream that
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  Speaker 1: will not stay. Down long broad flights of lamp lit stairs,
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  Speaker 1: we flow, noisy and scattered waves, crowding and shouting in broken,
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  Speaker 1: slow cascades. The gardens extend before us. We spread out swiftly.
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  Speaker 1: Trees are above us in darkness. The canyon fades, and
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  Speaker 1: we recall with a gleaming stab of sadness, vaguely and incoherently,
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  Speaker 1: some dream of a world we came from, a world
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  Speaker 1: of sun, blue hills. A black wood whispers around us,
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  Speaker 1: green eyes gleam. Someone cries in the forest, and someone kills.
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  Speaker 1: We flow to the east, to the white lined, shivering sea.
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  Speaker 1: We reach to the west where the whirling sun went down.
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  Speaker 1: We close our eyes to music in bright cafes. We
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  Speaker 1: diverge from clamorous streets to streets that are silent. We
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  Speaker 1: loaf where the winds build, fountain plays, and growing tired,
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  Speaker 1: we turn aside. At last, remember our secret selves. Seek
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  Speaker 1: out our towers, lay weary hands on the banisters, and climb, climbing,
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  Speaker 1: each to his little four square dream of love or lust,
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  Speaker 1: or beauty or death or crime. Section six. Over the
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  Speaker 1: darkened city, the city of towers, the city of a
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  Speaker 1: thousand gates, over the gleaming, terraced roofs, the huddled towers,
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  Speaker 1: over a somnolent whisper of loves and hate. The slow
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  Speaker 1: wind flows drearily, streams and falls with a mournful sound,
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  Speaker 1: down rain, dark walls on one side, purples the lustrous
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  Speaker 1: dusk of the sea, and dreams in white at the
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  Speaker 1: city's feet. On one side sleep the plains with heaped
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  Speaker 1: up hills, oaks and beeches whisper and rings about it.
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  Speaker 1: Above the trees are towers where dread bells beat. The
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  Speaker 1: fisherman draws his streaming net from the sea and sails
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  Speaker 1: toward the far off city that seems like one vague town.
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  Speaker 1: The dark bough plunges to foam on blue black waves,
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  Speaker 1: and shrill rain seethes like a ghostly music about him
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  Speaker 1: in a quiet shower. Rain with a shrill sings on
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  Speaker 1: the lapsing waves. Rain thrills over the roofs again, like
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  Speaker 1: a shadow of shifting silver, It crosses the city. The
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  Speaker 1: lamps in the streets are streamed with rain, and sparrows
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  Speaker 1: complain beneath deep eaves and among world leaves as sea
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  Speaker 1: gulls blowing from tower to lower tower, from wall to
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  Speaker 1: remoter wall, skim with the driven rain to the rising
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  Speaker 1: sea sound, and close gray wings and fall, hearing great
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  Speaker 1: rain above me. I now remember a girl who stood
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  Speaker 1: by the door and shut her eyes. Her pale cheeks
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  Speaker 1: glistened with rain. She stood and shivered into a forest
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  Speaker 1: of silver. She vanished slowly. Voices about me rise, voices,
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  Speaker 1: clear and silvery voices of rain drops. We struck with
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  Speaker 1: silver claws, We struck her down. We are the ghosts
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  Speaker 1: of the singing furies. A chorus of elfin voices blowing
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  Speaker 1: about me weaves to a babble of sound. Each cries
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  Speaker 1: a secret. I run among them, reach out vain hands,
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  Speaker 1: and drown. I am the one who stood beside you
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  Speaker 1: and smiled, thinking your face so strangely young. I am
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  Speaker 1: the one who loved you but did not dare. I
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  Speaker 1: am the one you followed through crowded streets, the one
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  Speaker 1: who escaped you, the one with red, gleamed hair. I
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  Speaker 1: am the one you saw to day, who fell senseless
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  Speaker 1: before you, hearing a certain bell, a bell that broke
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  Speaker 1: great memories in my brain. I am the one who
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  Speaker 1: passed unnoticed before you, invisible in a cloud of secret pain.
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  Speaker 1: I am the one who suddenly cried, beholding the face
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  Speaker 1: of a certain man on the dazzling screen. They wrote
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  Speaker 1: me that he was dead. It was long ago. I
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  Speaker 1: walked in the streets for a long while, hearing nothing,
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  Speaker 1: and returned to see it again. And it was so weave, weave,
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  Speaker 1: weave you streaks of rain. I am dissolved and woven again.
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  Speaker 1: Thousands of faces rise and vanish before me, thousands of
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  Speaker 1: voices weave in the rain. I am the one who
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  Speaker 1: rode beside you, blinking at a dazzle of golden lights,
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  Speaker 1: tempests of music swept me. I was thinking of the
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  Speaker 1: gorgeous promise of certain knights, of the woman who suddenly
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  Speaker 1: smiled at me this day, smiled in a certain, delicious,
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  Speaker 1: sidelong way, and turned as she reached the door to
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: smile once more. Her hands are whiter than snow on
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  Speaker 1: midnight water. Her throat is golden and full of golden laughter.
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  Speaker 1: Her eyes are strange as the stealth of the moon.
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  Speaker 1: On a night in June, she runs among whistling leaves.
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  Speaker 1: I hurry after she dances in dreams over white waved water.
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  Speaker 1: Her body is white and fragrant and cool magnolia petals
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  Speaker 1: that float on a white starred pool. I have dreamed
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  Speaker 1: of her, dreaming for many nights of a broken music,
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  Speaker 1: in golden lights, of broken webs of silver heavily falling
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  Speaker 1: between my hands and their white desire, and dark leaved
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  Speaker 1: boughs edged with a golden radiance dipping to screen afire.
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  Speaker 1: I dream that I walk with her beneath high trees,
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  Speaker 1: but as I lean to kiss her face, she is
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  Speaker 1: blown aloft on wind. I catch at leaves and run
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  Speaker 1: in a moonless place, and I hear a crashing of
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  Speaker 1: terrible rocks flung down in shattering trees and cracking walls,
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  Speaker 1: and a net of intense white flame roars over the town.
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  Speaker 1: And someone cries, and darkness folls. Now she has leaned
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  Speaker 1: and smiled at me. My veins are afire with music.
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  Speaker 1: Her eyes have kissed me. My body has turned to light.
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  Speaker 1: I shall dream to her secret heart to night. He
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  Speaker 1: rises and moves away. He says no word. He folds
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  Speaker 1: his evening paper and turns away. I rush through the
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  Speaker 1: dark with rows of lamp lit faces. Fire bells peel,
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  Speaker 1: and some of us turn to listen, and some sit
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  Speaker 1: motionless in their accustomed places. Cold rain lashes, the car
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  Speaker 1: roof scurries in gusts, streams down the windows, and waves
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  Speaker 1: and ripples of luster. The lamps in the streets are
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: distorted and strange. Some one takes his watch from his
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  Speaker 1: pocket and yawns. One peers out in the night for
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: the place to change. Rain, rain, rain, We are buried
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  Speaker 1: in rain. It will rain forever. The swift wheels hiss
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  Speaker 1: through water. Pale sheets of water gleam in the windy street.
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  Speaker 1: The pealing of bells is lost in a drive of
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  Speaker 1: rain drops. Remote and hurried the great bell's beat. I
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  Speaker 1: am the one whom life so shrewdly betrayed. Misfortune dogs me.
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  Speaker 1: It always hunted me down. And today the woman I
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  Speaker 1: love lies dead. I gave her roses, a ring with opals.
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  Speaker 1: These hands have touched her head. I bound her to
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  Speaker 1: me in all soft ways. I bound her to me
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  Speaker 1: in a net of days. Yet now she has gone
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  Speaker 1: in silence and said no word. How can we face
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: these dazzling things? I ask you? There is no use.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: We cry and are not heard. They cover a body
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  Speaker 1: with roses. I shall not see it. Must one return
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  Speaker 1: to the lifeless walls of a city whose soul is
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: charred by fire. His eyes are closed, his lips pressed
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: tightly together. Wheels hiss beneath us. He yields us our desire. No,
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  Speaker 1: do not stare so. He is weak with grief. He
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: cannot face you. He turns his eyes aside. He is
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: confused with pain. I suffered this, I know it was
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  Speaker 1: long ago. He closes his eyes and drowns in death again.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: The wind hurls, blows at the rain starred glistening windows.
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  Speaker 1: The wind shrills down from the half seen walls. We
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  Speaker 1: flow on, the mournful wind in a dream of dying,
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  Speaker 1: and at last the silence falls. Section seven. Midnight bells
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  Speaker 1: toll and along the cloud high towers. The golden lights
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  Speaker 1: go out, the yellow windows darken, the shades are drawn.
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  Speaker 1: In thousands of rooms, we sleep, We await the dawn.
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  Speaker 1: We lie face down, We dream, We cry aloud with terror,
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  Speaker 1: half rise or seem to stare at the ceiling or walls. Midnight,
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  Speaker 1: the last of shattering bell notes falls. A rush of
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  Speaker 1: silence whirls over the cloud high towers, a vortex of
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: soundless hours. The bells have just struck twelve. I should
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: be sleeping, but I cannot delay any longer to write
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: and tell you the woman is dead. She died, you
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: know the way, just as we planned. Smiling with open
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  Speaker 1: sunlit eyes, smiling upon the outstretched fatal hand. He folds
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  Speaker 1: his letters, steps softly down the stairs. The doors are
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  Speaker 1: closed and silent. A gas jet flares. His shadow disturbs,
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: a shadow of balustrades. The door swings shut behind night
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: roars above him into the night. He fades. Wind. Wind,
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  Speaker 1: wind carving the walls, blowing the water that gleams in
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: the street, blowing the rain, the sleet in the dark alley.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: An old tree cracks and folds. Oak boughs moan in
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: the haunted air. Lamps blow down with a crash and
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: tinkle of glass. Darkness whistles. Wild hours pass, and those
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: whom sleep eludes lie wide eyed, hearing above their heads
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: a goblin night go by. Children are waked and cry.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: The young girl hears the roar in her sleep and
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: dreams that her lover is caught in a burning tower.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: She clutches the pillow, She gasps for breath. She screams,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: and then by degrees her breath grows quiet and slow.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: She dreams of an evening long ago of colored lanterns
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: balancing under trees, some of them softly catching a fire,
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: And beneath the lanterns, a motionless face she sees, golden
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: with lamp light, smiling serene. The leaves are pale and
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  Speaker 1: glittering green. The sound of horns blows over the trampled grass.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: Shadows of dancers pass. The face smiles closer to her.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: She tries to lean backward away. The eyes burn close
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: and strange. The face is beginning to change. It is
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: her lover. She no longer desires to resist. She is
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: held and kissed. She closes her eyes and melts in
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: a seethe of flame, with a smoking ghost of shame.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: Wind wind, wind, wind, in an enormous brain, blowing dark
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  Speaker 1: thoughts like fallen leaves. The wind shrieks, the wind grieves,
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: it dashes the leaves on wolls. It whirls then again,
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: and the enormous sleeper vaguely and stupidly dreams and desires
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: to stick er, to resist a ghost of pain. One
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: whom the city imprisoned because of his cunning, who dreamed
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  Speaker 1: for years in a tower, seizes this hour of tumult
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  Speaker 1: and wind. He files through the rusted bar, leans his
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: face to the rain, laughs up at the night, slides
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: down the knotted sheet, swings over the wall to fall
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: to the street with a catlike foal, SLINKs round a
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  Speaker 1: quavering rim of windy light, and at last is gone,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: leaving his empty cell for the pallor of dawn. The
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: mother whose child was buried to day turns her face
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: to the window. Her face is gray, and all her
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: body is cold with the coldness of rain. He would
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: have grown as easily as a tree. He would have
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: spread a pleasure of shade above her. He would have
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: been his father again. His growth was ended by a freezing,
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: invisible shadow. She lies and does not move, and is
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: stabbed by the rain, wind, wind, wind. We toss and dream,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: We dream. We are clouds and stars blown in a stream.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: Windows rattle above our beds, We reach vague gesturing hands.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: We lift our heads here sounds far off, and dream
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: with quivering breath, our curious separate ways through life and death.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: Section eight. The white fog creeps from the cold sea
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: over the city, over the pale gray tumbled towers, and
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: settles among the roofs, the pale gray walls, along damp,
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: sinuous streets. It crawls, curls like a dream among the
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: motionless trees, and seems to freeze. The fog slips ghost
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: like into a thousand rooms, whirls over sleeping faces, spins
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: in an atomy dance round nisty street lamps, and blows
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: in cloudy waves over open spaces. And one, from his
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: high window, looking down, peers at the cloud white town
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: and thinks its island towers are like a dream. It
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: seems an enormous sleeper within whose brain laborious shadows revolve
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: and break and gleam. End of Part one recording by
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: Expatriate in Bangor Main Part two of the House of Dust,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: a symphony by Conrad Aiken. This Librivok's recording is in
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: the public domain. Recording by Expatriate in Bangor Main Part two,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: Part two, Section one. The round red sun heaves darkly
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: out of the sea. The walls and towers are warmed,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: and gleam sounds go drowsily up from streets and war
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: The city stirs like one that is half in dream,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: and the mist flows up by dazzling walls and windows,
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: where one by one we wake and rise. We gaze
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: at the pale, gray, lustrous sea a moment we rub
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: the darkness from our eyes and face our thousand devious
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: secret mornings, and do not see how the pale mist,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: slowly ascending, shaped by the sun, shines like a white
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: robe dreamer compassionate over our towers, bending there like one
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: who gazes into a crystal. He broods upon our city
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: with somber eyes. He sees our secret fears vaguely unfolding,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: sees cloudy symbols shaped to rise. Each gleaming point of
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: light is like a seed dilating swiftly to coiling fires,
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: each cloud becomes a rapidly dimming face, Each hurrying face
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: records its strange desires. We descend our separate stairs towards
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: the day, merge in the somnolent mass that fills the street,
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: lift our eyes to the soft blue space of sky,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: and walk by the well known walls with accustomed feet.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: Section two, The fulfilled dream. More towers must yet be built,
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: more towers destroyed, great rocks hoisted in air, And he
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: must seek his bread in high, pale sunlight, with gulls
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: about him, and clouds just over his eyes. And so
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: he did not mention his dream of falling, but drank
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: his coffee in silence, and heard in his ears that
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: horrible whistle of wind, and felt his breath sucked out
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: of him, and saw the tower flash by, and the
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: small trees swell beneath him. He patted his boy on
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: the head, and kissed his wife, looked quickly around the
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: room to remember it, and so went out. For once
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: he forgot his pail. Something had changed, But it was
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: not the street. The street was just the same. It
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: was himself. Puddles flashed in the sun in the pawn
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: shop door, the same old black cat winked green amber eyes.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: The butcher stood by his window, tying his apron. The
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: same men walked beside him, smoking pipes, reading the morning paper.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: He would not yield, he thought, and walk more slowly,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: as if he knew for certain. He walked to death,
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: but with his usual pace, deliberate, firm, looking about him, calmly,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: watching the world, taking his ease. Yet, when he thought
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: again of the same dream, now dreamed three separate times,
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: always the same, and heard that whistling wind, and saw
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: the windows flashing upward past him, he slowed his pace
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: a little, and thought with horror, how monstrously that small
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: tree thrust to meet him. He slowed his pace a little,
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: and remembered his wife was forty, then, too old for
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: work like this. Why should it be? He'd never been afraid,
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: His eye was sure, his hand was steady. But dreams
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: had meanings. He walked more slowly, and looked along the roofs,
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: all built by men, and saw the pale blue sky,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: And suddenly he was dizzy with looking at it. It
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: seemed to whirl and swim, It seemed the color of terror,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: of speed of death. He lowered his eyes to the stones.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: He walked more slowly. His thoughts were blown and scattered
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: like leaves. He thought of the pale, Why then was
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: it forgotten? Because he would not need it? Then, just
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: as he was grouping his thoughts again about that drug
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: store corner under an arc lamp, where first he met
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: the girl whom he would marry, that blue eyed, innocent
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: girl in a soft blouse, he waved his hand for signal,
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: and up he went, in the dusty chute that hugged
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: the wall above the tree, from girdered floor to floor,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: above the flattening roofs, until the sea lay wide and
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: waved before him. And then he stepped giddily out from
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: that security to the red rib of iron against the sky,
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: and walked along it, feeling it sing and tremble, and
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: looking down one instant saw the tree just as he
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: dreamed it was, and looked away and up again, feeling
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: his blood go wild, he gave the signal. The long
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: girder swung closer to him, dropped, clanging into place, almost
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: pushing him off. Mad Hammers began their mad house clatter.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: The white hot rivets were tossed from below and deftly
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: caught in pails He signaled again, and wiped his mouth,
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: and thought a place so high in the air should
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: be more quiet. The tree far down below teased at
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: his eyes, teased at the corners of them, until he
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: looked and felt his body go suddenly small and light,
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: felt his brain float off like a dwindling vapor, and
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: heard a whistle of wind, and saw a tree come
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: plunging up to him, and thought to himself, By God,
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: I'm done for now. The dream was right. Section three interlude.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: The warm sun dreams in the dust. The warm sun
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: falls on bright red roofs and walls. The trees in
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: the park exhale a ghost of rain. We go from
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: door to door in the streets, again, talking, laughing, dreaming,
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: turning our faces, recalling other times and places. We crowd,
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: not knowing why. Around a gate. We crowd together and wait.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: A stretcher is carried out. Voices are stilled. The ambulance
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: drives away. We watch its roof flash by. Here someone
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: say a man fell off the building and was killed,
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: fell right into a barrel. We turn again among the
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: frightened eyes of white faced men and go our separate ways,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: each bearing with him a thing he tries, but vainly
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: to forget, a sickened crowd, A stretcher, red and wet.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: A hurdy gurdy sings in the crowded street. The golden
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: notes skip over the sunlit stones, wings are upon our feet.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: The sun seems warmer, the winding street more bright Sparrows
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: come whirring down in a cloud of light. We bear
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: our dreams among us, bear them all like hurdy gurdy music.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: They rise and full climb to beauty and die. The
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: wandering lovered dreams of his lover's mouth and smiles at
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: the hostile sky. The broker smokes his pipe and sees
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: a fortune. The murderer hears a cry section four nightmare.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: Draw three cards, and I will tell your future. Draw
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: three cards and lay them down, Rest your palms upon them,
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: stare at the crystal and think of time. My father
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: was a clown. My mother was a gipsy out of Egypt,
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: and she was gutten with child in a strange way.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: And I was born in a cold eclipse of the moon,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: with a future in my eyes as clear as day.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: I sit before the gold embroidered curtain and think her
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: faces like a wrinkled desert. The crystal burns in lamp light.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: Beneath my eyes. A dragon slowly coils on the scaly curtain,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: upon a scarlet cloth, A white skull lies. Your hand
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: is on the hand that holds three lilies. You will
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: live long, love many times. I see a dark girl
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: here who once betrayed you. I see a shadow of
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: secret crimes. There was a man who came intent to
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: kill you, and hid behind a door and waited for you.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: There was a woman who smiled at you and lid
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: There was a golden girl who loved you, begged you,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: crawled after you, and died. There is a ghost of
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: murder in your blood, coming or past, I know not which.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: And here is danger. A woman with sea green eyes
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: and a white skinned as a witch. The words hiss
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: into me like raindrops falling on sleepy fire. She smiles
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: a meaning smile. Suspicion eats my brain. I ask a question.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: Something is creeping at me, something vile. And suddenly, on
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: the wall behind her head, I see a monstrous shadow
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: strike and spread. The lamp puffs out, A great blow
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: crashes down. I plunge through the curtain, run through dark
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: to the street, and hear swift steps retreat the shades
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: are drawn. The door is locked behind me. Behind the door,
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: I hear a hammer sounding. I walk in a cloud
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: of wonder. I am glad, I mingle among the crowds.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: My heart is pounding. You do not guess the adventure
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: I have yet, you too, all have had your dark adventures,
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: your sudden adventures, or strange or sweet. My peril goes
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: out from me, is blown among you. We loiter dreaming
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: together along the street. Section five retrospect Round white clouds
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: roll slowly above the housetops, over the clear red roofs.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: They flow and pass. A flock of pigeons rises with
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: blue wings flashing, rises with whistle of wings, hovers an
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: instant and settles slowly again on the tarnished grass. And
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: one old man looks down from a dusty window and
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: sees the pigeons circling about the fountain, and desires once
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: more to walk among those trees. Lovers walk in the
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: noontime by that fountain. Pigeons dip their beaks to drink
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: from the water, and soon the pond must freeze. The
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: light wind blows to his ears a sound of laughter.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: Young men shuffle their feet loaf in the sunlight. A
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: girl's laugh rings like a silver bell. But clearer than
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: all these sounds is a sound he hears more in
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: his secret heart than in his ears. A hammer's steady
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: crescendo like a knell. He hears the snarl of pine
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: boards under the plain, the rhythmic saw, and then the
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: hammer again, playing with delicate strokes. That somber scale, and
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: the fountain dwindles. The sunlight seems to pale. Time is
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: a dream, he thinks, the destroying dream. It lays great
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: cities in dust, It fills the seas, It covers the
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: face of beauty and tumbles walls. Where was the woman
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: he loved? Where was his youth? Where was the dream
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: that burned his brain like fire? Even a dream grows
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: gray at last and falls. He opened his book once
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: more beside the window, and read the printed words upon
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: that page. The sunlight touched his hand. His eyes move slowly,
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: the quiet words enchanted time and age. Death is never
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: an ending. Death is a chain. Death is beautiful, for
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: death is strange. Death is one dream out of another.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: Flowing Death is accorded music softly, going by sweet transition
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: from key to richer key. Death is a meeting place
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: of Sea and Sea Section six, Adele and Davis. She
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: turned her head on the pillow and cried once more,
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: and drawing a shaken breath and closing her eyes to
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: shut out if she could this dingy room, the wigs
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: and costumes scattered around the floor, yellows and greens in
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: the dark. She walked again those nightmare streets which she
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: had walked so often. Here, at a certain corner, under
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: an arc lamp, blown by a bitter wind, she stopped
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: and looked in through the brilliant windows of a drug
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: store and wondered if she dared to ask for poison.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: But it was late, few customers were there. The eyes
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: of all the clerks would freeze upon her, and she
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: would wilt and cry. Here by the river, she listened
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: to the water si lapping the wall, and felt queer
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: fascination in its blackness. But it was cold, the little
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: waves looked cruel, the stars were keen, and a windy
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: dash of spray struck her cheek and withered her veins,
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: And so she dragged herself once more to home and bed.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: Paul hadn't guessed it yet, though twice already she'd fainted
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: once the first time on the stage, so she must
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: tell him soon or else get out. How could she
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: say it? That was the hideous thing. She'd rather die
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: than say it, And all the trouble months when she
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: couldn't earn a cent, and then if he refused to
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: marry her. Well what she saw him laughing, making a
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: foolish joke, his gray eyes turning quickly, and the words
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: fled from her tongue. She saw him sitting silent, brooding
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: over his morning coffee. Maybe, and tried again. She bit
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: her lips and trembled and looked away and said, say,
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: Paul boy, listen, there's something I must tell you. There
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: she stopped, wondering what he'd say. Say, what would he say?
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: Spring it? Kid? Don't look so serious, But what I've
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: got to say is serious. Then she could see how
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: suddenly he would sober, his eyes would darken, he'd look
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: so terrifying he always did, And what could she do
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: but cry? Perhaps then he would guess, perhaps he wouldn't,
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: And if he didn't, but ask her what's the matter.
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: She knew she'd never tell, just say she was sick.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: And after that, when would she dare again? And what
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: would he do? Even suppose she told him if it
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: were Felix. If it were only Felix, she wouldn't mind
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: so much. But as it was, bitterness choked her. She
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: had half a mind to pay out Felix for never
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: having liked her by making people think that it was he.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: She'd write a letter to someone before she died, just
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: saying Felix did it and wouldn't marry, And then she'd die.
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: But that was hard on Paul. Paul would never forgive her.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: He'd never forgive her. Sometimes she almost thought Paul really
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: loved her. She saw him look reproachfully at her coffin,
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: and then she closed her eyes and walked again those
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: nightmare streets that she had walked so often. Under an
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: arc lamp swinging in the wind, she stood and stared
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: in through a drug store window, watching a clerk wrap
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: up a little pill box. But it was late, no
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: customers were there. Pitiless eyes would freeze her secret in
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: her And then what poison would she dare to ask for?
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: And if they asked her, why, what would she say?
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: Section seven? Two lovers overtones. Two lovers here at the
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: corner by the steeple, Two lovers blow together like music blowing,
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: and the crowd dissolves about them like a sea. Recurring
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: waves of sound break vaguely about them. They drift from
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: wall to wall, from tree to tree. Well, am I
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: late upward? They look and laugh, They look at the
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: great clocks, golden hands. They laugh and talk, not knowing
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: what they say, only their words, like music, seem to
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: play and seeming to walk. They tread strange sarabands. I
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: brought you this. The soft words float like stars down
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: the smooth heaven of her memory. She stands again by
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: a garden wall. The peach tree is in bloom. Pink
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: blossoms fall, water sings from an open tap. The bees
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: glisten and murmur among the trees. Some one calls from
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: the house. She does not answer. Backward, She leans her
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: head and dreamily smiles at the peach tree leaves, where
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: through she sees an infinite may sky spread a vult
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: profoundly blue. The voice from the house fades far away.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: The glistening leaves more vaguely, ripple and sway. The tap
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: is closed, the water ceases to hiss, silence, blue sky.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: And then I brought you this. She turns again and smiles.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: He does not know. She smiles from long ago. She
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: turns to him and smiles. Sunlight above him roars like
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: a vast invisible sea. Gold is beaten before him, shrill
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: bell of silver. He is released of weight, His body
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: is free. He lifts his arms to swim. Dark ears,
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: like sinister tides coil under him. The lazy sea waves
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: crumble along the beach with a whirring sound like wind
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: in bells. He lies outstretched on the yellow wind worn sands,
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: reaching his lazy hands among the golden grains and sea
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: white shells. One white rose or is it pink to day?
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: They pause and smile, not caring what they say. If
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: only they may talk. The crowd flows past them like
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: dividing waters, dreaming. They stand dreaming. They walk pink to day.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: Face turns to dream bright face. Green leaves rise round them,
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: Sunshine settles upon them. Water in drops of silver folds
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: from the rose. She smiles at a face that smiles
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: through leaves. From the mirror, She breathes the fragrance her
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: dark eyes. Close. Time is dissolved. It blows like a
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: little dust. Time, like a flurry of rain, patters and passes,
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: starring the window pane once long ago. One night she
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: saw the lightning with long blue quiver of light, ripping
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: the darkness. And as she turned in terror, a soft
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: face leaned above her, leaned softly down softly around her,
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: A breath of roses was blown. She sank in waves
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: of quiet. She seemed to float in a sea of silence,
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: and soft steps grew remote. Well, let us walk in
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: the park. The sun is warm. We'll sit on a
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: bench and talk. They turn and glide. The crowd of
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: faces wavers and breaks and flows. Look how the oak
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: tops turn to gold in the sunlight. Look how the
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: tower is changed and glows. Two lovers move in the crowd,
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: like a link of music. We press upon them, We
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: hold them and let them pass. A chord of music
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: strikes us, and straight we tremble. We tremble like wind
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: blown grass. What was this dream? We had a dream
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: of music, music that rose from the opening earth like magic,
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: and shook its beauty upon us, and died away. The
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: long cold streets extended once more before us, The red
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: sun dropped, the walls grow gray. Section eight, The box
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: with silver handles. Well, it was two days after my
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: husband died, two days and the earth still raw, above him,
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: and I was sweeping the carpet in their hall in
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: number four, the room with a red wallpaper. Some chorus
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: girls and men were singing that song they'll soon be
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: lighting candles round a box with silver handles, and hearing
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: them sing it, I started to cry. Just then he
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: came along and stopped on the stairs and turned and
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: looked at me, and took the cigar from his mouth
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: and sort of smiled and said, say, what's the matter,
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: And then came down where I was leaning against the
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: wall and touched my shoulder and put his arm around me.
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: And I I was so sad thinking about it, thinking
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: that it was raining in a cold night, with Jim
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: so unaccustomed to being dead, that I was happy to
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: have him sympathize, to feel his arm, and leaned against
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: him and cried. And before I knew it, he got
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: me into a room where a table was set and
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: no one there, and sat me down on a sofa
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: and held me close and talked to me, telling me
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: not to cry, that it was all right, he'd look
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: after me, but not to cry. My eyes were getting red,
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: which didn't make me pretty. And he was so nice
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: that when he turned my face between his hands and
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: looked at me with those blue eyes of his, and
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: smiled and leaned and kissed me. Somehow I couldn't tell
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: him not to do it. Somehow I didn't mind. I'd
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: let him kiss me and closed my eyes. Well that
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: was how it started. For when my heart was eased
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: with crying and grief had passed and left me quiet.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: Somehow it seemed as if it wasn't honest to change
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: my mind, to send him away, or say I hadn't
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: meant it. And anyway it seemed so hard to explain.
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: And so we sat and talked, not talking much, but
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: meaning as much in silence as in words, there in
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: that empty room with palms about us, that private dining room.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: And as we sat there, I felt my future changing
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: day by day, with unknown streets opening left and right,
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: new streets with farther lights, new taller houses, doors swinging
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: into hallways filled with light, half open luminous windows with
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: white curtains streaming out in the night in sudden music,
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: And thinking of this and through it, half remembering a
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: quick and horrible death. My husband's eyes, the broken plastered walls,
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: my boy asleep. It seemed as if my brain would
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: break in two. My voice began to tremble. And when
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: I stood and told him I must go, and said
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: good night, I couldn't see the end. How would it end?
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: Would he return tomorrow or would he not? And did
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: I want him to? Or would I rather look for
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: another job. He took my shoulders between his hands and
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: look down into my eyes and smiled and said good night.
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: If he had kissed me, that would have well, I
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: don't know, but he didn't. And so I went downstairs, then,
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: half elated, hoping to close the door before that party
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: in number four should sing that song again. They'll soon
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: be lighting candles round a box with silver handles, And
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: sure enough I did. I faced the darkness, and my
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: eyes were filled with tears, and I was happy. Section
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: nine interlude. The days the nights flow one by one
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: above us. The hours go silently over our lifted faces.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: We are like dreamers who walk beneath the sea, beneath
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: high walls. We flow in the sun together. We sleep,
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: we wake, we laugh, we pursue, we flee. We sit
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: at tables and sip our morning coffee. We read the
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: papers for tales of lust or crime. The door swing
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: shut behind the latest comer. We set our watches, regard
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: the time. What have we done? I close my eyes,
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: remember the great machine whose sinister brain before me smote,
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: and smote with a rhythmic beat. My hands have torn
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: down walls, the stone and plaster. I dropped great beams
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: to the dusty street. My eyes are worn with measuring
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: cloths of purple and golden cloths, and wavering cloths and pale.
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: I dream of a crowd of faces, white with menace,
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: hands reach up to tear me. My brain will fail
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: here where the walls go down beneath our picks. These walls,
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: whose windows gap against the sky, atom by atom of
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: flesh and brain and marble will build a glittering tower.
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: Before we die. The young boy whistles hurrying down the street.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: The young girl hums beneath her breath. One goes out
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: to beauty and does not know it, And one goes
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: out to death. Section ten, Sudden Death, Number four. The
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: girl who died on the table, the girl with golden hair,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: The purpling body lies on the polished marble. We opened
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: the throat and lay the thyroid bare. One who held
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: the ether cone remembers her dark blue, frightened eyes. He
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: heard the sharp breath quiver, and saw her breast more
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: hurriedly fall and rise. Her hands made futile gestures. She
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: turned her head, fighting for breath. Her cheeks were flushed
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: to scarlet, and suddenly she lay dead, And all the
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: dreams that hurried along her veins came to the darkness
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: of a sudden wall. Confusion ran among them. They whirled
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: and clamored, They fell, they rose, they struck, they shouted,
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: till at last a pallor of silence hushed them all.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: What was her name? Where had she walked that morning?
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: Through What dark forest? Came her feet along? What sunlit walls?
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: What peopled street? Backward? He dreamed along a chain of days,
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: He saw her go her strange and seek ways, waking
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: and sleeping. Noon and night, she sat by a mirror,
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: braiding her golden hair. She read a story by candle light.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: Her shadow ran before her along the street. She walked
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: with rhythmic feet, turned a corner, descended a stair. She
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: bought a paper, held it to scan the headlines, smiled
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: for a moment at sea gulls high in sunlight, and
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: drew deep breaths of air. Days passed bright clouds of days,
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: nights passed, and music murmured within the walls of lighted windows.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: She lifted her face to the light and danced. The
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: dancers wreathed and grouped in moving patterns, clustered, receded, streamed, advanced.
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: Her dress was purple, her slippers were golden, her eyes
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: were blue, and a purple orchid opened its golden heart
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: on her breast. She leaned to the surly languor of
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: lazy music, leaned on her partner's arm to rest. The
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: violins were weaving a weft of silver, The horns were
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: weaving a lustrous breeze of gold, and time was caught
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: in a glistening pattern, Time too elusive to hold. Shadows
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: of leaves fell over her face, and sunlight she turned
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: her face away nearer she moved to a crouching darkness.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: With every step and day, Death, who at first had
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: thought of her only an instant, at a great distance
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: across the night, smiled from a window upon her, and
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: followed her slowly from purple light to light. Once in
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: her dreams, he spoke out clearly, crying, I am the
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: murderer Death, I am the lover who keeps his appointment
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: at the doors of breath, She rose and stared at
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: her own reflection, half dreading there to find the dark
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: eyed ghost waiting beside her, or reaching from behind to
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: lay pale hands upon her shoulders. Or was this in
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: her mind? She combed her hair. The sunlight glimmered along
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: the tossing strands. Was there a stillness in this hair,
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: a quiet in these hands? Death was a dream. It
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: could not change these eyes. Blow out there light, or
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: turn this mouth to dust. She combed her hair and
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: sang she would live forever. Leaves flew past her window
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: along the gust, and graves were dug in the earth,
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: and coffins passed, and music ebbed with the ebbing hours
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: and dreams went along her veins, and scattering clouds, through
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: streaming shadows on walls and towers. Section eleven snow falls.
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: The sky is gray and sullenly glares with purple lights
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: in the canyon street. The fiery sign on the dark
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: tower wreaths and flares. The trodden grass in the park
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: is covered with white. The streets grow silent beneath our feet.
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: The city dreams, it forgets its past to night, and
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: one from his high bright window, looking down over the
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: enchanted whiteness of the town, seeing through whirls of white,
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: the vague gray towers desires like this to forget what
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: will not pass, the littered papers, the dust, the tarnished grass,
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: gray death, stale, ugliness, and sodden hours. Deep in his heart,
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: old bells are beaten again, slurred bells of grief and pain,
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: dull echoes of hideous times and poisonous places. He desires
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: to drown in a cold, white piece of snow. He
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: desires to forget. A million faces. In one room breathes
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: a woman who dies of hunger. The clock ticks slowly
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: and stops, and no one winds it. In one room,
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: fade gray violets in a vase. Snowflakes faintly hiss and
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: melt on the window. In one room, minute by minute,
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: the flutess plays the lamp, lip page of music, the
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: tireless scales. His hands are trembling, his short breath fails.
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: In one room silently, Lover looks upon lover and thinks
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: the air is fire. The drunkard swears and touches the
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: harlot's heart strings with the sudden hand of desire, And
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: one goes late in the streets and thinks of murder,
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: And one lies staring and thinks of death. And one
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: who has suffered clenches her hands, despairing and holds her breath.
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: Who are all these who flow in the veins of
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: the city, coil and revolve, and dream, vanish or gleam.
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: Some mount up to the brain and flower in fire.
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: Some are destroyed, some die, some slowly stream, And the
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: new are born who desire to destroy the old. And
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: fires are kindled and quenched, and dreams are broken, and
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: wols flung down, And the slow night whirls in snow
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: over towers of dreamers, and whiteness hushes the town. End
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: of part two recording by Expatria in Bangor Main Part
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: three of the House of Dust, a symphony by Conrad Aiken.
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: This Librivat's recording is in the public domain. Recording by
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: Expatriate and Bangor, Maine, Part three, Section one. As evening
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: falls and the yellow lights leap one by one along
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: high walls and along black streets that glisten as if
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: with rain, the muted city seems like one in a
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: restless sleep, who lies in dreams of vague desires and memories,
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: and half forgotten pain along dark veins like lights. The
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: quick dreams run, flash, are extinguished, flash again to mingle
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: and glow at last in the enormous brain, and die away.
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: As evening falls, a dream dissolves these insubstantial walls. A
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: myriad secretly gliding lights lie bare. The lubbards rise, The
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: harlot combs her hair. The dead man's face grows blue
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: in the dizzy lamp light. The watchman climbs the stair.
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: The bank defaulter leers at a chaos of figures and
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: runs among them and is beaten down. The sick man
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: coughs and hears the chisels ringing. The tired clown sees
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: the enormous crowd, a million faces, motionless in their places,
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: ready to laugh and seize and crush and tear. The
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: dancer smooths her hair, laces her golden slippers, and runs
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: through the door to dance once more, hearing swift music
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: like an enchantment, rise, feeling the praise of a thousand eyes.
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: As darkness falls, the walls grow luminous and warm. The
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: walls tremble and glow, with the lives within them, moving, moving,
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: like music, secret and rich and warm. How shall we
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: live tonight? Where shall we turn to? What? New light
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: or darkness? Yearn A thousand winding stairs lead down before us,
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: and one by one in myriads we descend by lamp
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: lit flowered walls, long ballastes, through half lit holes which
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: reached no end. Section two. The screen maiden, you read?
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: What is it then that you are reading? What music
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: moves so silently in your mind? Your bright hand turns
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: the page. I watch you from my window, unsuspected. You
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: move in an alien land, a silent age. The poet
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: what was his name? Tokay? Tokay? The poet walked alone
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: in a cold, late rain, and thought his grief was
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: like the crying of sea birds, for his lover was dead.
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: He never would love again, rein in the dreams of
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: the mind, reign forever, rein in the sky of the heart,
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: rain in the willows. But then he saw this face,
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: this face like flame, this quiet lady, this portrait by Hiroshigi,
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: and took it home with him, And with it came
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: what unexpected changes, subtle as weather, the dark room, cold,
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: as rain grew faintly, fragrant, stirred with a stir of
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: april warmed its corners with light again, and smoke of
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: incense whirled about this portrait, and the quiet lady there,
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: so young, so quietly, smiling, with calm hands, seemed ready
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: to loose her hair and smile and lean from the picture,
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: or say one word, the word already clear, which seemed
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: to rise like light between her eyelids. He held his
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: breath to hear, and smiled for shame, and drank a
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: cup of wine, and held a candle, and searched her
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: face through all the little shadows to see what secret
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: might give so warm a grace. Was it? The quiet
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: mouth restrained a little, the eyes half turned aside, the
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: jade ring on her wrist still almost swinging. The secret
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: was denied. He chose his favorite pen and drew these
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: verses and slept, And as he slept a dream came
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: into his heart. His lover entered and chided him, and wept,
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: And in the morning, waking, he remembered and thought the
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: dream was strange. Why did his darkened lover rise from
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: the garden. He turned and felt a change, as if
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: a some one hidden smiled and watched him. Yet there
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: was only sunlight there until he saw those young eyes,
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: quietly smiling, and held his breath to stare, and could
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: have sworn her cheek had turned a little, had slightly
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: turned away. Sunlight dozed on the floor. He sat and wondered,
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: nor left his room that day, and that day, and
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: for many days thereafter, he sat alone and thought, no
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: lady had ever lived so beautiful as Hiroshigi wrought, or
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: if she lived, no matter in what country, by what
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: far river or hill or lonely sea, he would look
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: in every face until he found her. There was no
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: other as fair as she, And before her quiet face,
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: he burned soft incense and brought her every day boughs
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: of the peach or almond or snow white cherry, And
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: somehow she seemed to say, that silent lady, young and
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: quietly smiling, that she was happy there. And sometimes seeing this,
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: he started to tremble and desired to touch her hair,
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: to lay his palm along her hand, touched faintly with
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: delicate finger tips, the ghostly smile that seemed to hover
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: and vanish upon her lips, until he knew he loved
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: this quiet lady. And night by night a dread leered
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: at his dreams for he knew that Hiroshigi was many
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: centuries dead, and the lady too was dead, and all
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: who knew her dead and long turned to dust. The
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: thin moon waxed and waned and left him paler. The
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: peach leaves flew in a gust, and he would surely
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: have died. But there one day a wise man, white
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: with age, stared at the portrait and said, this Hiroshige
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: knew more than archimage. Cunningly drew the body and called
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: the spear, till partly it entered there. Sometimes at death
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: it entered the portrait. Wholly, do all I say with care,
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: and she you love may come to you when you
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: call her. So then this ghost Tokay ran in the sun,
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: bought wine of a hundred merchants, and alone, at the
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: end of day, entered the darkening room and faced the portrait,
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: and saw the quiet eyes gleaming and young in the dusk,
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: and held the wine cup, and knelt and did not rise,
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: and said, aloud, Rosan, will you drink this wine? Said
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: it three times aloud, and at the third the faint
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: blue smoke of incense rose to the walls in a cloud,
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: and the lips moved faintly and the eyes and the
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: calm hands stirred, and suddenly, with a sigh, the quiet
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: lady came slowly down from the portrait and stood while
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: worlds went by, and lifted her young white hands and
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: took the wine cup. And the poet trembled and said, Rosan,
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: will you stay forever? Ever? Yes? I will stay. But
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: what when I am dead? When you are dead, your
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: spirit will find my spirit, and then we shall die
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: no more. Music came down upon them in spring, returning.
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: They remembered worlds before, and years went over the earth
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: and over the sea, and lovers were born and spoke
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: and died. But forever in sunlight went these two immortal
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: till Kay and the quiet Bride. Section three haunted chambers.
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: The lamp lit page is turned, the dream forgotten. The
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: music changes tone. You wake, remember deep world you live before,
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: deep worlds hereafter of leaf on, falling leaf, music on music,
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: rain and sorrow and wind and dust and laughter. Helen
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: was late, and Miriam came too soon. Joseph was dead,
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: his wife and children starving. Elaine was married and soon
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: to have a child. You dreamed last night of fiddler crabs.
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: With fiddles, they played a buzzing melody, and you smiled
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: tomorrow what and what of yesterday? Through soundless labyrinths of
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: dream you pass through many doors to the one door
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: of all. Soon as it's opened, we shall hear a music,
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: or see a skeleton foal. We walk with you. Where
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: is it that you lead us? We climb the muffled
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: stairs beneath high lanterns, We descend again, We grope through
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: darkened cells. You say, this darkness here will slowly kill me.
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: It creeps and weighs upon me, is full of bells.
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: This is the thing remembered. I would forget no matter
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: where I go, how soft I tread. This windy gesture
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: menaces me with death fatigue. It says, and points its
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: finger at me, touches my throat and stops my breath.
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: My fans, my jewels, the portrait of my husband, the
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: torn certificate for my daughter's grave. These are but mortal
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: seconds in a mortal time. They brush me, fade away
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: like drops of water. They signify no crime. Let us
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: retrace our steps. I have deceived you. Nothing is here.
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: I could not frankly tell you no hint of guilt
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: or faithlessness or threat. Dreams. They are madness, staring eyes illusion.
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: Let us return hear music and forget Section four illicit
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: of what she said to me that night, No matter,
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: the strange thing came next day. My brain was full
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: of music. Something she played me. I couldn't remember it all,
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: but phrases of it wreathed and wreathed among faint memories,
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: seeking for something, trying to tell me something urging to restlessness,
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: verging on grief. I tried to play the tune from memory,
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: but memory failed. The chords and discords climbed and found
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: no resolution, only hung there and left me rbid. Where
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: then had I heard it? What secret dusty chamber? Was it?
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: Hinting dust? It said, dust and dust and sunlight, A cold,
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: clear april evening, snow bedraggled, rain worn, snow dappling the
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: hideous grass, and some one walking alone in, some one
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: saying that all must end, for the time had come
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: to go. These were the phrases. But behind beneath them,
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: a greater shadow moved. And in this shadow I stood
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: and guessed. Was it the blue eyed lady, the one
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: who always danced in golden slippers, and had I danced
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: with her upon this music? Or was it further back,
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: the unplumbed twilight of childhood, no much recent than that,
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: you know without my telling you how. Sometimes a word
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: or name eludes you, and you seek it through running
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: ghosts of shadow, leaping at it, lying in wait for
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: it to spring upon it, spreading faint snares for it
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: of sense or sound, until of a sudden, as if
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: in a phantom forest, you hear it, see it flash
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: among the branches, and, scarcely knowing how, suddenly have it.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: Well it was so I followed down this music, glimpsing
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: a face in darkness, hearing a cry, remembering days forgotten moods,
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: exhausted corners in sunlight, puddles reflecting stars, until of a sudden,
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: and least of all suspected, the thing resolved itself. And
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: I remembered in April afternoon, eight years ago, or was
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: it nine, no matter, call it nine, a room in
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: which the last of sunlight faded, a vase of violets,
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: fragrance and white curtains, And she who played the same
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: thing later playing. She played this tune, and in the
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: middle of it abruptly broke it off, letting her hands
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: fall in her lap. She sat there so a moment,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: with shoulders drooped, then lifted up a rose, one great
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: white rose I'd open like a lotus, and pressed it
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: to her cheek and closed her eyes. You know we've
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: got to end this. Miriam loves you. If she should
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: ever know, or even guess at, what would she do? Listen?
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: I'm not absurd, I'm sure of it. If you had
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: eyes for women to understand them, which you've never had,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: you'd know it too. So went this colloquy, half humorous
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: with undertones of pathos, half grave, half flippant, while her
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: fingers softly felt for this tune, played it and let
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: it fall now note by singing note, now, chord by chord,
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: repeating phrases with a kind of pleasure. Was it symbolic
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: of the woman's weakness that she could neither break it
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: nor conclude it? Paused and wandered, paused again, while she
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: perplexed and tired. Half told me I must go, half
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: asked me if I thought I ought to go? Well.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: April passed with many other evenings, evenings like this, with
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: later suns and warmer, with violets always there, and fragrant curtains.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: And she was right, and Miriam found it out, And
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: after that, when eight deep years had passed or nine,
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: we met once more by accident. But was it just
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: by accident? I wonder she played this tune or what
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: then was intended? Section five Melody in a restaurant. The
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: cigarette smoke loops and slides above us, dipping and swirling.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: As the waiter passes. You strike a match and stare
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: upon the flame. The tiny fire leaps in your eyes
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: a moment and dwindles away as silently as it came.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: This melody, you say, has certain voices. They rise like
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: neriads from a river, singing, lift white faces, and dive
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: to darkness again. Wherever you go, you bear this river
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: with you. A leaf falls and it flows, and you
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: have pain, So says the tune to you. But what
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: to me? What to the waiter as he pours you coffee?
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: The violinist who suavely draws his bow, that man who
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: folds his paper overhears it. A thousand dreams revolve and
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: fall and flow. Some one there is who sees a
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: virgin stepping down marble stairs to a deep tomb of roses.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: At the last moment, she lifts, remembering eyes. Green leaves
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: blow down. The place is checked with shadows. A long
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: drawn murmur of rain goes down the skies, and oaks
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: are stripped and bare, and smoke with lightning, and clouds
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: are blown and torn upon high forests, and the great
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: sea shakes its walls, and then falls silence, And through
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: long silence falls this melody once more, down endless stairs.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: She goes, as once before, so says the tune to him.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: But what to me? What are the worlds I see?
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: What shaped fantastic terrible dreams? I go, my secret way down,
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: secrets all my errand is not so simple as it seems.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: Section six, Portrait of one dead. This is the house.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: On one side, there is darkness. On one side there
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: is light into the darkness. You may lift your lanterns,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: oh any number, it will still be night. And here
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: are echoing stairs to lead you downward to long sonorous halls.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: And here is spring forever at these windows with roses
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: on the walls. This is her room. On one side.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: There is music on one side, not a sound. At
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: one step. She could move from love to silence, feel
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: myriad darkness coiling round. And here are balconies from which
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: she heard you, your steady footsteps on the stair, and
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: hear the glass in which she saw your shadow as
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: she unbound her hair. Here is the room with ghostly
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: walls dissolving, the twilight room in which she called you lover,
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: and the floorless room in which she called you friend.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: So many times in doubt she ran between them, through
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: windy corridors of darkening end. Here she could stand with
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: one dim light above her, and hear far music like
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: a sea in caverns murmur away at hollowed walls of stone.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: And here, in a roofless room, where it was raining,
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: she bore the patient sorrow of rain alone. Your words
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: were walls which suddenly froze around her. Your words were
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: windows large enough for moonlight, too small to let her through.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: Your letters, fragrant cloisters, faint with music, the music that
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: assuaged her. There was you. How many times she heard
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: your step ascending, yet never saw your face. She heard
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: them turn again, ring slowly fainter, till silence swept the place.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: Why had you gone the door? Perhaps mistaken, you would
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: go elsewhere? The deep walls were shaken. A certain rose leaf,
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: sent without intention, became with time a woven web of fire.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: She wore it and was warm. A certain hurried glance
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: let fall at parting became with time the flashings of
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: a storm. Yet there was nothing asked, no hint to
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: tell you of secret idols carved in secret chambers. From
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: all you did and said, nothing was done until at
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: last she knew you. Nothing was known till somehow she
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: was dead. How did she die? You say, she died
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: of poison, simple and swift, and much to be regretted.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: You did not see her pass so many thousand times
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: from light to darkness, pausing so many times before her glass.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: You did not see how many times she hurried to
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: lean from certain windows, vainly hoping, passionate still for beauty,
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: remembered spring. You did not know how long she clung
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: to music. You did not hear her sing. Did she
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: then make the choice and step out, bravely from sound
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: to silence, close herself those windows? Or was it true
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: instead that darkness moved for once and so possessed her.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: Will never know, you say, for she is dead. Section seven. Porcelain.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: You see that porcelain range there in the window, platters
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: and soup plates, done with pale pink rose buds and
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: tiny violets and wreaths of ivy. See how the pattern
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: clings to the gleaming edges, Their works of art, minutely
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: seen and felt, each petal done devoutly. Is it failure
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: to spend your blood like this? Study them? You will
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: see there in the porcelain, if you stare hard enough,
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: a sort of swimming of lights and shadows, ghosts within
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: a crystal, my brain unfolding. There you'll see me sitting
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: day after day, close to a certain window, looking down,
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: sometimes to see the people. Sometimes my wife comes there
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: to speak to me. Sometimes the gray cat waves his
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: tail around me. Goldfish swim in a bowl, glisten in sunlight,
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: dilate to a gorgeous size. Blow delicate bubbles, drowse among
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: dark green weeds. On rainy days. You'll see a gas
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: light shedding light behind me in eye shade round my forehead.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: There I sit, twirling the tiny brushes in my paint cups,
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: painting the pale pink rosebuds, minute violets, exquisite wreaths of
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: dark green ivy leaves. On this leaf goes a dream.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: I dreamed last night of two soft patterned toads. I
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: thought them stones until they hopped, and then a great
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: black spider tarantula, perhaps a hideous thing across the room
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: in one tremendous leap. Here, as I coil the stems
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: between two leaves, it is as if dwindling to atomy's size.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: I cried the secret between two universes. A friend of
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: mine took hashish once and said, just as he fell asleep,
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: he had a dream though with his eyes wide open,
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: and felt or saw or knew himself apart of marvelous,
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: slowly wreathing, intricate patterns, plain upon plane, depth upon coiling depth,
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: amazing leaves folding one on another, voluted grasses, twists and
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: curves and spirals, all of it darkly moving. As for me,
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: I need no hashish for it. It's too easy. Soon
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: as I shut my eyes, I set out walking in
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: a monstrous jungle of monstrous pale pink rose leaves, violets
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: purple as death, dripping with water, and ivy leaves as
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: big as clouds. Above me, here in a simple pattern
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: of separate violets with scalloped edges gilded. Here you have
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: me thinking of something else, my wife, You know there's
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: something lacking force or will or passion. I don't know
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: what it is. And so sometimes when I am tired,
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: or haven't slept three nights, or it is cloudy with
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: low threat of rain, I get uneasy, just like poplar
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: trees ruffling their leaves, and I begin to think of
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: poor Pauline, so many years ago, and that delicious night.
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: Where is she now? I meant to write, but she
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: has moved by this time, And then besides, she might
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: find out I'm married while there is more. I'm getting
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: old and timid. The years have gnawed my will, I've
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: lost my nerve. I never strike out boldly as I
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: used to, but sit here painting violets. And remember that
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: thrilling night. Photographers, she said, asked her to pose for them.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: Her eyes and forehead, dark brown eyes and a smooth
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: and pallid forehead were thought so beautiful, and so they were. Pauline.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: These violets are like words, remembered, Darling, she whispered, Darling, darling, darling. Well,
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: I suppose such days can come. But once, Lord, how
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: happy we were here. If you only knew it is
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: a story here in the leaves. I stopped my work
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: to tell it, and then when I had finished, went
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: on thinking a man I saw on a train. I
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: was still a boy who killed himself by diving against
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: a wall. Here is a recollection of my wife when
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: she was still my sweetheart years ago. It's funny how
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: things change, just change by growing without an effort. And
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: here are trivial things, a chill, an errand forgotten, a
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: cut while shaving, A friend of mine who tells me
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: he is married. Or is that lasts so trivial? Well,
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: no matter. This is the sort of thing you'll see
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: of me if you look hard enough. This, in its way,
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: is a kind of fame, My life arranged before you
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: in scrolls of leaves, rosebuds, violets, ivy, clustered or wreathed
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: on plate and cup and platter. Sometimes I say, I'm
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: just like John the Baptist. You have my head before
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: you on a platter. Section eight uffins Interlude, Wind blows,
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: snow falls, The great clock in its tower ticks with
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: reverberant coil, and tolls the hour at the deep sudden stroke.
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: The pigeons fly, the fine snow flutes the cracks between
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: the flagstones. We close our coats and hurry and search
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: the sky. We are like music. Each voice of it,
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: pursuing a golden separate dream, remote, persistent, climbing to fire,
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: receding to hoarse despair. What do you whisper? Brother? What
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: do you tell me? We pass each other, are lost
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: and do not care. One mounts up to beauty, serenely singing,
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: forgetful of the steps that cry behind him. One drifts
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: slowly down from a waking dream, one foreseeing lingers forever
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: unmoving upward and downward past him. There we stream. One
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: has death in his eyes and walks more slowly. Death
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: among jonquills told him a freezing secret. A cloud blows
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: over his eyes. He ponders earth. He sees in the
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: world a forest of sunlit junqules. A slow black poison
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: huddles beneath that mirth. Death, from street to alley, from
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: door to window, cries out his news of unplumbed worlds,
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: approaching of a cloud of darkness soon to destroy the tower.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: But why comes death, he asks, in a world so perfect,
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: or why the minutes gray? In the golden hour music,
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: a sudden glissando, sinister, troubled adrift of wind torn petals
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: before him, passes down jangled streets and dies. The bodies
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: of old and young, of maimed and lovely, are slowly
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: borne to earth with a dirge of cries, down cobbled streets.
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: They come down huddled stairways, through silent halls, through carbon
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: golden doorways, from freezing rooms as bare as rock. The
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: curtains are closed across dessert windows. Earth streams out of
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: the shovel. The pebbles knock, Mary, whose hands rejoiced to
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: move in sunlight, silent Elane, Grave, Anne who sang so clearly,
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: Fugitive Helen who loved and walked alone, Miriam, too soon dead,
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: darkly remembered childless Ruth who sorrowed but could not atone,
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: Jeanne whose laughter flashed over depths of terror, and Eloise
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: who desired to love but dared not, Doris, who turned
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: alone to the dark and cried. They are blown away,
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: like wind flung chords of music. They drift away the
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: sudden music has died, and one with death in his
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: eyes comes walking slowly and sees the shadow of death
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: in many faces, and thinks the world is strange. He
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: desires immortal music in spring forever, and beauty that knows
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: no change. Section nine Cabaret We sit together and talk
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: or smoke in silence, you say, but use no words.
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: This night is passing, as other nights when we are
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: dead will pass. Perhaps I misconstrue you. You mean only
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: how deathly pale my face looks in that glass? You say,
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: we sit and talk of things important? How many others
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: like ourselves this instant mark the pendulum swinging against the wall.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: How many others, laughing, sip their coffee or stare at
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: mirrors and do not talk at all. This is the moment,
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: so you would say, in silence, when suddenly we have
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: had too much of laughter, into freezing stillness falls no
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: word to say, our mouths feel foolish. For all the
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: days hereafter, what have we saved? What news? What tune?
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: What play? We see each other as vain and feudal tricksters,
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: posturing like bald apes before a mirror. No pity dims
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: our eyes. How many others like ourselves this instant see
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: how the great world and are wise? Well? You are right,
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: no doubt they fall these seconds when suddenly all's distempered, vacuous, ugly,
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: and even those most like angels creep for schemes. The
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: one you love leans forward smiles, deceives you, opens a
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: door through which you see dark dreams, but this is
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: momentary or else enduring leads you with devious eyes, through
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: mists and poisons, to horrible chaos or suicide or crime.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: And all these others who at your conjuration grow pale,
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: feeling the skeleton touch of time, or laughing sadly talk
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: of things important, or stare at mirrors, startled to see
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: their faces, or drown in the waveless vacuum of their days. Suddenly,
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: as from sleep, awake, forgetting this nauseous dream, take up
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: their accustomed ways, exhume the ghost of a joke, renew
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: loud laughter, forget the moles above their sweetheart eyebrows, lean
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: to the music, rise and dance once more in a
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: rose festooned illusion. With kindness in their eyes. They say,
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: as we ourselves have said, remember what wizardry the slow
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: waltz works upon us, and how it brings to mind
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: forgotten things. They say, how strange it is that one
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: such evening can wake vague memories of so many springs.
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: And so they go in a thousand crowded places. They
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: sit to smile and talk, or rise to rag time
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: and for their pleasures, agree or disagree with secret symbols.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: They play on secret passions with cunning eyes. They see
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: the innocent word that sets remembrance, trembling, the dubious word
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: that sets the scared heart, beating. The pendulum on the
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: wall shakes down seconds. They laugh at time, dissembling, or
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: coil for a victim, and do not talk at all.
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: Section ten Letter from time to time. Lifting his eyes,
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: he sees a soft blue starlight through the one small window,
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: the moon above black trees and clouds and venus, and
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: turns to write. The clock behind ticks softly. It is
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: so long, indeed, since I have written two years, almost
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: your last is turning yellow, that these first words I
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: write seem cold and strange. Are you the man I knew?
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: Or have you altered? Altered of course, just as I
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: too have altered, And whether towards each other or more apart,
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: we cannot say. I've just re read your letter, not
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: through forgetfulness, but more for pleasure, pondering much on all
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: you say in it, of mystic consciousness, divine conversion, the
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: sense of oneness with the infinite faith, in the world,
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: its beauty and its purpose. Well you believe one must
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: have faith in some sort if one's to talk through
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: this dark world contented? But is the world so dark,
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: or is it rather our own brute minds, in which
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: we hurry trembling through streets as yet unlighted? This I
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: think you have been, always, let me say, romantic, eager
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: for color, for beauty, soon discontented, with a world of
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: dust and stones, in flesh too ailing. Even before the
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: question grew to problem and drove you bickering into metaphysics,
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: you met on lower planes the same great dragon, seeking release,
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: some fleeting satisfaction in strange esthetics you tried, as I remember,
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: one after one, strange cults, in some too morbid, the cruder, first,
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: more violent sensations, gorgeously carnal things conceived and acted with
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: splendid animal thirst, Then by degrees savoring all more delicate gradations.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: In all that hue and tone may play on flesh
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: or thought on brain, you passed, if I may say so,
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: From red and scarlet, through morbid greens to mauve. Let
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: us regard ourselves, you used to say, as instruments of music,
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: whereon our lives will play as we desire, and let
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: us yield these subtle bodies and subtler brains and nerves
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: to all experienced plays. And so you went from subtle
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: tune to subtler, each heard once twice or thrice at
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: the most tiring of each, in closing one by one,
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: your doors drew in slowly through darkening labyrinths of feeling,
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: towards the central chamber, which now you've reached. What then's
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: the secret of this ultimate chamber or innermost? Rather, if
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: I see it clearly, it is the last and cunningest
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: resort of one who has found this world of dust
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: and flesh, this world of lamentations, death, in justice, sickness, humiliations,
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: slow defeat, bareness and ugliness, and iteration too meaningless, or
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: if it has a meaning, to tiresomely insistent on one meaning, futility.
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: This world, I hear you saying, with lifted chin and
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: arm and outflung gesture, coldly imperious, this transient world. What
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: has it then to give? If not containing deep hints
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: of nobler worlds? We know its beauties momentary and trivial
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: for the most part, proceed through flesh, passing like flesh away,
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: and know how much outweighed they are by darkness. We
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: are like searchers in a house of darkness, a house
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: of dust. We creep with little lanterns, throwing our tremulous
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: arcs of light at random now here now there, seeing
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: a plane, an angle, an edge, a curve, a wall,
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: a broken stairway, leading to who knows what, but never
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: seeing the hole at once. We grope our way a little,
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: and then grow tired. No matter what we touch. Dust
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: is the answered, dust, dust everywhere. If this were all,
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: what the use you ask? But this is not for
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: Why should we be seeking? Why should we bring this
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: need to seek for beauty to lift our minds? If
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: there were only dust? This is the central chamber you
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: have come to, turning your back to the world, until
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: you came to this deep room and looked through rose
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: stained windows and saw the hues of the world so
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: sweetly changed well in a measure. So only do we all,
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: I am not sure that you can be refuted. At
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: the very last, we all put faith in something you
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: in this ghost that animates your world, this ethical ghost.
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: And I you'll say, in reason, or sensuous beauty, or
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: in my secret self. Though as for that, you put
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: your faith in these as much as I do, And then,
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: forsaking reason ascending, you would say to intuition, you predicate
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: this ghost of yours as well. Of course, you might
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: have argued, and you should have, that no such deep
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: appearance of design could shape our world without entailing purpose.
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: For can design exist without a purpose, without conceiving mind?
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: We are like children who find upon the sands beside
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: a sea strange patterns drawn circles, arcs, ellipses molded in sand?
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: Who put them there? We wonder? Did someone draw them
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: here before we came? Or was it just the sea?
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: We pour upon them, but find no answer, only suppositions.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: And if these perfect shapes are evidence of imminent mind,
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: it is but circumstantial. We never come upon him at
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: his work. He never troubles us. He stands aloof well,
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: if he stands at all, is not concerned with what
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: we are? Or do you, if you like, may think
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: he broods upon us, loves us, hates us. Conceive some
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: purpose of us in so doing? You see, without much
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: reason will in law, I am content to say this
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: world is ordered happily so for us by accident we
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: go our ways, untroubled save by laws of natural things?
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: Who makes the more assumption if we were wise, which
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: God knows we are not. Notice, I call on God,
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: we'd plumb this riddle. Not in the world we see,
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: but in ourselves. These brains of ours, these delicate spinal clusters,
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: have limits. Why not learn them? Learn their cravings. Which
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: of the two minds yours are mine? Is sound? Yours
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: which scorn the world that gave it freedom until you
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: manage to see that world as omen or mine, which
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: likes the world takes all for granted, sorrow as much
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: as joy, and death as life. You lean on dreams
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: and take more credit for it. I stand alone. Well,
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: I take credit too. You find your pleasure in being
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: at one with all things, fusing in lambent dream, rising
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: and falling as all things rise and fall. I do
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: that too, with reservations. I find more varied pleasure in
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: understanding in so fine beauty, even in this strange dream
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: of yours. You call the truth? Well, I have bored you,
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: and it's growing late for household news. What have you heard?
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: I wonder you must have heard that Paul was dead
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: by this time of spinal cancer. Nothing could be done.
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: We found it out too late. His death has changed me,
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: deflected much of me that lived as he lived, saddened me,
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: slowed me down. Such things will happen. Life is composed
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: of them, and it seems wisdom to see them clearly,
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: meditate upon them, and understand what things flow out of them.
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: Otherwise all goes on here much as always. Why won't
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: you come and see us in the spring and bring
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: old times with you? If you could see me sitting
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: here by the window, watching venus go down behind my
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: neighbor's poplar branches, just where you used to sit, I'm
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: sure you'd come this year. They say the springtime will
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: be early. Section eleven. Conversation undertones. What shall we talk of?
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: Lepo Hoksai? You narrow your long, dark eyes to fascinate me.
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: You smile a little outside the night goes by, I
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: walk alone in a forest of ghostly trees. Your pale
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: hands rest palm downwards on your knees. These lines converging,
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: they suggest such distance. The soul is drawn away beyond horizons,
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: lured out to what one dares not think. Sometimes I
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: glimpse these infinite perspectives in intimate talk with such as you,
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: and shrink. One feels so petty, one feels such emptiness
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: you mimic horror. Let fall your lifted hand and smile
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: at me with brooding tenderness. Alone on darkened waters, I
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: fall and rise, slow waves above me, break faint waves
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: of prize. And then these colors. But who would dare
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: describe them? This faint rose, coral pink, this green pistachio,
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: so insubstantial, like the dim, ghostly things two lovers find
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: in loves still twilight chambers, old peacock fans, and fragrant
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: silks and rings, rings, let us say, drawn from the
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: hapless fingers of some great lady many centuries nameless? Or
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: is that too sepulchral dulled with dust, and necklaces that
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: crumble if you touch them, in gold brocades that breathe
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: then fall to rust. No, I am wrong. It is
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: not these I sought for. Why did they come to mind?
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: You understand me? You know these strange vagaries of the brain.
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: I walk alone in a forest of ghostly trees. Your
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: pale hands rest palm downwards on your knees. These strange
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: vagaries of yours are all too plain. But why perplex
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: ourselves with tedious problems of art or such things? While
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: we sit here living with all that's in our secret
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: hearts to say hearts. Your pale hands softly strokes the satin.
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: You play deep music, know well what you play. You
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: stroke the satin with thrilling of finger tips. You smile
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: with faintly perfumed lips. You loose your thoughts like birds,
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: brushing our dreams with soft and shadowy words. We know
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: your words are foolish, yet sit here, bound in tremulous
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: webs of sound. How beautiful is intimate talk like this?
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: It is as if we dissolved gray walls between us,
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: step through the solid portals, become but shadows to hear
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: a hidden music our own vast shadows lean to a
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: giant size on the windy walls, or dwindle away. We
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: hear our soft footfalls echo forever behind us, ghostly clear music,
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: sings far off, flows suddenly near, and dies away like rain.
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: We walk through subterranean caves, again vaguely above us, feeling
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: a shadowy weight of frescoes on the sea, strange half
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: lit things, soundless grotesques with writhing claws and wings. And
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: here a beautiful face looks down upon us, and someone
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: hurries before unseen and sings have we seen all, I
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: wonder in these chambers. Or is there yet some gorgeous
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: vault arched low where sleeps in amazing beauty? We do
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: not know. The question falls. We walk in silence together,
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: thinking of that deep vault and of its secret. This lamp,
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: these books, this fire are suddenly blown away in a
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: whistling darkness. Deep walls crash down in the whirlwind of desire.
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: Section twelve, which is Sabbath. Now, when the moon slid
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: under the cloud and the cold, clear dark of starlight fell,
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: he heard in his blood the well known bell tolling
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: slowly in heaves of sound, slowly beating, slowly beating, shaking
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: its pulse on the stagnant air. Sometimes it swung completely round, horribly,
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: gasping as if for breath, falling down with an anguished cry.
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: Now the red bat, he mused, will fly. Something is
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: marked this night for death. And while he mused along
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: his blood flew ghostly voices, remote and thin. They rose
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: in the cavern of his brain like ghosts. They died
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: away again, and hands upon his heart were laid, and
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: music upon his flesh was played, until, as he was
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: bidden to do, he walked the wood he so well knew.
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: Through the cold dew. He moved his feet and heard
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: far off, as under the earth, discordant music in shuddering tones,
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: screams of laughter, horrible mirth, clapping of hands, and thudding
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: of drums, and the long drawn wail of one in pain.
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: To night, he thought, I shall die again, We shall
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: die again in the red eyed fire, to meet on
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: the edge of the wood beyond. With a placid gaze
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: of fed he walked, and behind the whisper of trees,
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: in and out, one walked with him. She parted the
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: branches and peered at him through lowered lids, her two
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: eyes burned. He heard her breath, he saw her hand.
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: Wherever he turned his way, she turned kept pace with him,
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: now fast, now slow, moving her white knees as he moved.
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: This is the one I have always loved. This is
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: the one whose bat soul comes to dance with me,
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: flesh to flesh in the starlight dance of horns and drums.
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: The walls and roofs, the scarlet towers sank down behind
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: a rushing sky. He heard a sweet song just begun,
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: abruptly shatter in tones and die. It whirled away, cold silence, fell,
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: and again came tollings of a bell. This air is
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: alive with witches. The White Witch rides swifter than smoke
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: on the starlet wind, in the clear darkness, while the
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: moon hides. They come like dreams, like something remembered. Let
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: us hurry, beloved, take my hand. Forget these things that
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: trouble your eyes. Forget, forget. Our flesh is changed, lighter
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: than smoke. We wreathe and rise. The cold air hisses
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: between us, beloved, beloved, what was the word you said?
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: Something about clear music that sang through water. I cannot remember.
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: The storm drops break on the leaves. Something was lost
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: in the darkness. Someone is dead. Someone lies in the
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: garden and grieves. Look how the branches are tossed in
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: this air, flinging their green to the earth. Black clouds
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: rush to devour the stars in the sky. The moon
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: stares down like a half closed eye. The leaves are scattered,
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: the birds are blown, Oaks crash down in the darkness.
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: We run from our windy shadows. We are running alone.
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: The moon was darkened across it flew the swift, gray,
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: tenebrous shape. He knew, like a thing of smoke cross
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: the sky, the witch, he said, And he heard a cry,
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: and another came, and another came, and one groan, duskily
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: red with blood, floated an instant across the moon, hung
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: like a dull, fantastic flame. The earth has veines. They
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: throbbed to night. The earth swells warm beneath my feet.
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: The tips of the trees grow red and bright. The
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: leaves are swollen. I feel them beat. They press together,
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: They push and sigh. They listen to hear the great
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: bat cry, the great red bat with a woman's face. Hurry,
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: he said, and pace for pace. That other who trod
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: the dark with him crushed the live leaves reached out
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: white hands and closed her eyes, the better to see
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: the priests with claws, the lovers with hoofs, the fire
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: lit rock, the sarabands. I am here, she said. The
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: bow he broke, was it the snapping bough that spoke?
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: I am here, she said? The white thigh gleam cold
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: in starlight among dark leaves. The head thrown backward as
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: he had dreamed, The shadowy red, deep jasper mouth, and
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: the lifted hands, and the virgin breasts passed beside him
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: and vanished away. I am here she cried, He answered, stay,
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: and laughter arose, and near and far answering, laughter rose
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: and died. Who is there in the dark? He cried.
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: He stood in terror, and heard a sound of terrible
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: hoofs on the hollow ground. They rushed worse still as
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: silence fell, and he heard deep tollings of a bell. Look, beloved,
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: why do you hide your face? Look in the center there,
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: above the fire, there bearing the boy who blasphemed love.
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: They are playing a piercing music upon him with a
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: bow of living wire. The virgin Harlot sings. She leans
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: above the beautiful, anguished body and draws slow music from
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: those strings. They dance around him. They fling red roses
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: upon him. They trample him with their naked feet. His
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: cries are lost in laughter. Their feet grow dark with
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: his blood. They beat and beat, They dance upon him
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: until he cries no more? Have we not heard that
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: cry before? Somewhere, somewhere beside a sea in the green evening,
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: beneath green clouds, in a copper sky, was it you?
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: Was it? Ay? They have quenched the fires. They dance
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: in the darkness. The sadders have run among them to
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: seize and tear. Look, he is caught one by the hair.
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: She screams and falls. He bears her away with him,
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: and the night grows full of whistling wings. Far off.
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: One voice, serene and sweet, rises and sings by the
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: clear waters where once I died, in the calm evening,
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: bright with stars? Where have I heard these words? Was
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: it you who sang them? It was long ago? Let
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: us hurry, beloved. The hard hoofs trample, the tree tops,
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: tremble and glow in the clear dark on silent wings.
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: The red bat hovers beneath her moon. She drops through
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: the fragrant night and clings fast in the shop shadow,
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: with hands like claws, with soft eyes closed in mouth
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: that feeds to the young, white flesh that warmly bleeds.
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: The maidens circle in dance and rays from lifting throats
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: of soft sung prays. Their knees and breasts are white
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: and bare. They have hung pale roses in their hair.
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: Each of them, as she dances by, peers at the
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: blood with a narrowed eye. See how the red wing
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: wraps him round, See how the white youth struggles in
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: vain the white arms writhe in a soundless paine. He
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: writhes in the soft red veiny wings. But still she
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: whispers upon him and clings. This is the secret feast
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: of love. Look well, look well, before it dies. See
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: how the red one trembles above. See how quiet the
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: white one lies when through the trees and a voice
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: is heard singing far off. The dead leaves fall by
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: the clear waters where one I died in the calm evening,
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: bright with stars, one among numberless avatars. I wetted a mortal,
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: a mortal bride, and lay on the stones, and gave
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: my flesh and entered the hunger of him I loved.
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: How shall I ever escape this mesh, or be from
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: my lover's body remov'd. Dead leaves stream through the hurrying air,
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: and the menads dance with flying hair. The priest with hoofs,
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: the lovers with horns rise in the starlight. One by one,
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: they draw their knives on the spurting throats. They smear
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: the column with blood of goats. They dabble the blood
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: on hair and lips, and wait like stones for the
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: moon's eclipse. They stand like stones and stare at the sky,
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: where the moon leers down like a half closed eye
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: in the green moonlight. Still they stand, while wind flows
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: over the darkened sand, and brood on the soft, forgotten
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: things that filled their shadowy yesterdays. Where are the breasts,
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: the scarlet wings. They gaze at each other with troubled gaze,
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: And then as the shadow closes the moon, shout and
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: strike with their hoofs the ground, and rush through the dark,
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: and fill the night with the slowly dying clamor of sound.
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: There where the great walls crowd the stars, there by
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: the black wind riven walls, in a grove of twisted,
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: leafless trees. Who are these pilgrims? Who are these these three,
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: the one of whom stands upright, while one lies weeping,
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: and one of them crawls. The face that he turned
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: was a wounded face. I heard the dripping of blood
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: on stones. Hoofs had trampled and torn this place, and
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: the leaves were strewn with blood and bones. Sometimes I
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: think beneath my feet the warm earth stretches herself in sighs. Listen,
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: I heard the slow heart beat. I will lie on
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: this grass as a lover lies, and reach to the north,
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: and reach to the south, and seek in the darkness
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: for her mouth, beloved beloved, Where the slow waves of
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: the wind shatter pale foam among great trees, under the
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: hurrying stars, under the heaving arches, like one whirled down
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: under shadowy seas. I run to find you. I run
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: and cry, where are you? Where are you? It is I,
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: It is I. It is your eyes I seek. It
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: is your windy hair, your starlight body that breathes in
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: the darkness. There under the darkness, I feel you stirring.
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: It's this you? Is this you? Bats in this air,
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: go whirring in this soft mouth that darkly meets my mouth?
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: Is this the soft mouth I knew? Darkness and wind,
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: in the tortured trees, and the patter of dew. Dance, dance, dance, dance,
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: Dance till the brain is red with speed. Dance till
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: you fall. Lift your torches, kiss your lovers until they
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: bleed backward. I draw your anguished hair until your eyes
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: are stretched with pain backward. I prush you until you cry,
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: your lips grow white. I kiss you again. I will
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: take a torch and set you afire. I will break
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: your body and fling it away. Look you are trembling,
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: Lie still, beloved, Lock your hands in my hair, and say, darling, darling, darling, darling,
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: all night long till the break of day. Is it
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: your heart I hear beneath me? Or the far tolling
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: of that tower? The voices are still that cried around us.
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: The woods grow still for the sacred hour rise, white lover.
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: The day draws near. The gray trees lean to the
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: east in fear. By the clear waters where once I died? Beloved?
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: Whose voice was this that cried? By the clear waters
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: that reached the sun, By the clear waves that starward
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: run I found Love's body, and lost his soul, and
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: crumbled in flame that should have annealed. How shall I
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: ever again behold? By what dark waters? Shall I be healed? Silent?
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: The red leaves, one by one fall far off. The
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: mean ads run silence beneath my naked feet. The veins
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 1: of the red earth swell and beat. The dead leaves
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: sigh on the troubled air. Far off, the mean ads
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: bind their hair. Hurry, Beloved. The day comes soon. The
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: fire is drawn from the heart of the moon. The
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: great bell cracks and falls. At last, the moon whirls out.
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: The sky grows still. Look how the white cloud crosses
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: the stars and suddenly drops behind the hill. Your eyes
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: are placid. You smile at me. We sit in the
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: room by candle light. We peer in each other's veins,
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: and sea. No sign of the things we saw this night.
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: Only a song is in your ears, a song you
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: have heard, You think and dream, the song which only
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: the daemon hears. In the dark forest where mean ads scream,
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: by the clear waters where once I died, in the
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: calm evening, bright with stars. What do the strange words mean?
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: You say, and touch my hand and turn away Section thirteen.
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: The half shut doors through which we heard that music
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: are softly closed, horns muttered down to silence, The stars
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: whirl out, the night grows deep darkness settles upon us.
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: A vague refrain drowsily teases at the drowsy brain. In
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: numberless rooms, we stretch ourselves in sleep. Where have we been?
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 1: But savage chaos of music whirls in our dreams. We
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: suddenly rise in darkness, open our eyes, cry out, and
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: sleep once more. We dream we are numberless sea waves
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: languidly foaming a warm, white moonlit shore, or clouds blown
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: windily over a sky at midnight, or chords of music
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: scattered in hurrying darkness or a singing sound of rain.
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: We open our eyes and stare at the coiling darkness,
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: and enter our dreams again. End of Part three recording
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: by Expatriot in Bangor, Maine. Part four of the House
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: of Dust, a Symphony by Conrad Aiken. This LibriVox recording
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: is in the public domain. Recording by Expatriot in Bangor Maine,
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: Part four, Section one, Clairvoyant. This envelope, you say, has
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: something in it which once belonged to your dead son,
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 1: or something he knew was fond of, something he remembers.
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: The soul flies far, and we can only call it
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: by things like these, a photograph, a letter, ribbon, or
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: charm or watch. Wind flows softly, the long, slow, even
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 1: wind over the low roofs white with snow. Wind blows
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: bearing cold clouds over the ocean. One by one, they
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: melt and flow, streaming one by one over trees and towers,
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: coiling and gleaming in shafts of sun. Wind flows bearing clouds,
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: the hurrying shadows flow under them. One by one. A
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 1: spirit darkens before me. It is the spirit which in
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: the flesh you called your sun, a spirit young and
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: strong and beautiful. He says that he is happy, is
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: much honored, forgives and is forgiven. Rain and wind do
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: not perplex him, Storm and dust forgotten. The glittering wheels
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: and wheels of time are broken and laid aside. Ask
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: him why he did the thing he did. He is unhappy.
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: This thing, he says, transcends you. Dust cannot hold what
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: shines beyond the dust. What seems calamity is less than
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: a sigh, what seems disgrace is nothing. Ask him if
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: the one he hear is there, and if she loves
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: himself still. He tells you she is there and loves
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: him still, not as she did, but as all spirits love.
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: A cloud of spirits has gathered about him. They praise
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: him and call him, They do him honor. He is
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: more beautiful. He shines upon them. Wind flows softly, the long, deep,
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: tremulous wind over the low roof, white with snow, Wind
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: flows bearing dreams. They gather and vanish, one by one,
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: They sing and flow over the outstretched lands of days, remembered,
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: over remembered tower and wall. One by one they gather
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: and talk in the darkness, rise and glimmer and fall.
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: Ask him why he did the thing he did. He
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: knows I will understand. It is too late. He will
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: not hear me. I have lost my power. Three times
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: I've asked him. He will never tell me. God have
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: mercy upon him. I will ask no more. Section two
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: Death and a derisive chorus. The door is shut. She
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: leaves a curtained office, and down the gray walled stairs
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: comes trembling slowly towards the dazzling street. Her withered hand
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: clings tightly to the railing. The long stairs rise and
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: fall beneath her feet. Here in the brilliant sun, we jostle,
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: waiting to tear her secret out. We laugh, We hurry,
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: We go our way revolving sinister slow. She blinks in
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: the sun and then steps faintly downward. We whirl her away.
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: We shout, we spin, we flow. Where have you been,
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: old lady? We know your secret? Voices jangle about her
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: jeers and laughter. She trembles, tries to hurry, averts her eyes.
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 1: Tell us the truth, Old lady, Where have you been?
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: She turns and turns. Her brain grows dark with cries.
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: Look at the old fool tremble. She's been paying, paying
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: good money too to talk to spirits. She thinks she's
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: heard a message from one dead. What did he tell you?
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 1: Is he well? And don't lie to us? We all
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: know what he said. He said, the one he murdered
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: once still loves him. He says. The wheels and wheels
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: of time are broken, and dust and storm forgotten, and
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 1: all forgiven. But what you asked he wouldn't tell you, though,
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: ha ha, there's one thing you will never know. That's
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: what you get from meddling. So with heaven? Where have
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: you been, old lady? Where are you going? We know,
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: we know she's been to gab with spirits. Look at
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: the old fool, getting ready to cry? What have you gotten?
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: An envelope, old lady? A lock of hair, an eyelash
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: from his eye? How do you know the medium didn't
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: fool you? Perhaps he had no spirit, perhaps he killed it.
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 1: Here she comes, The old fool's lost her son. What
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 1: did he have? Blue eyes and golden hair? We know
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: your secret. What's done is done. Look out, you'll fall
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: and fall if you're not careful, right into an open grave.
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: But what's the hurry? You don't think you will find
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: him when you're dead? Cry cry? Look at her mouth
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 1: all twisted, Get her eyes all red. We know you,
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 1: know your name, and all about you, all you remember
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 1: and think, and all you scheme for We tear your
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 1: secret out. We leave you go laughingly down the street.
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 1: Die if you want to die, then, if you are
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 1: in such a hurry to know, she falls, We lift
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: her head. The wasted body weighs nothing in our hands.
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: Does no one know her, does no one with her?
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 1: When she fell? We eddy about her, move away in silence.
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: We hear slow tollings of a bell section. Three polympsest
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: a deceitful portrait. Well, as you say, we live for
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: small horizons. We move in crowds, We flow and talk together,
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 1: seeing so many eyes and hands and faces, so many mouths,
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: and all with secret meanings, yet know so little of them,
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: only seeing the small bright circle of our consciousness, beyond
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: which lies the dark. Some few we know, or think
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 1: we know. Once, on a sun bright morning, I walked
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 1: in a certain hallway, trying to find a certain door.
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 1: I found one, tried it opened, and there in a
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: spacious chamber, brightly lighted, a hundred men played music loudly, swiftly,
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: while one tall woman sent her voice above them in
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: powerful sweetness, closing then the door I heard it die
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: behind me, fade to whisper, and walked in a quiet
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 1: hallway as before. Just such a glimpse, as through that
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: open door, is all we know of those we call
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: our friends. We hear a sudden music, see a playing
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: of ordered thoughts, and all again as silence. The music,
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 1: we suppose as in ourselves, goes on forever there behind
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: shut doors, as it continues after our departure. So we
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 1: divine it played before we came. What do you know
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 1: of me? Or I of you? Little enough? We set
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 1: these doors ajar only for chosen movements of the music,
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 1: this passage, so I think, yet this is guesswork. Will
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 1: please him. It is in a strain he fancies more
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: brilliant though than his, And while he likes it, he
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 1: will be piqued. He looks at me, bewildered, and thinks
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 1: to judge himself. This too is guesswork. The music strangely, subtle,
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 1: deep in meaning, Perplexed with implications. He suspects me of
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: hidden riches, unexpected wisdom, or else. I let him hear
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: a lyric passage, simple and clear, and all the while
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 1: he listens, I make pretense to think my doors are closed,
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 1: This too bewilders him. He eyes me sidelong, wondering is
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: he such a fool as this or only mocking there.
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: I let it end sometimes, of course, and when we
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: least suspect it, when we pursue our thoughts with too
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: much passion, talking with too great zeal, our doors fly
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: open without intention, and the hungry watcher stares at the feast,
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: carries away our secrets and laughs. But this, for many
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 1: counts is seldom, And for the most part we vouchsafe
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: our friends our lovers too, only such few clear notes
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 1: as we shall deem them likely to admire praise me
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 1: for this, we say, or laugh at this, or marvel
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 1: at my candor, all the while withholding what's most precious
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 1: to ourselves some sinister depth of lust or fear or hatred,
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: the somber note that gives the cord its power, or
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: a white loveliness. If such we know too much like
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: fire to speak of without shame. Well this being so,
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 1: and we who know it being so curious about those
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: well locked houses, the minds of those we know to
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: enter softly and steal from floor to floor, up shadowy stairways,
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: from room to quiet room from wall to wall, breathing
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: deliberately the very air, pressing our hands and nerves against
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: warm darkness, to learn what ghosts are there. Suppose, for
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 1: once I set my doors wide open and bid you in.
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 1: Suppose I try to tell you the secrets of this
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 1: house and how I live here. Suppose I tell you
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: who I am, in fact, deceiving you as far as
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: I may know it, only so much as I deceive myself.
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: If you are clever, you already see me as one
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 1: who moves forever in a cloud of warm, bright vanity,
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 1: a luminous cloud which falls on all things with a
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 1: quivering magic, changing such outlines as a light may change,
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 1: brightening what lies dark to me, concealing those things that
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 1: will not change. I walk sustained in a world of
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: things that flatter me. A sky just as I would
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: have had it, trees and grass, just as I would
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: have shaped and colored them, Pigeons and clouds, and sun
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: and whirling shadows, and stars that brightening climb through mist
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 1: at nightfall. In some deep way, I am aware, these
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: praise me where they are beautiful, or hint of beauty.
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 1: They point somehow to me. This water says shimmering at
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 1: the sky, or undulating in broken and gleaming parodies of clouds,
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: rippled in blue, or sending from cool depths to meet
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 1: the falling leaf. The leaf's clear image. This water says,
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 1: there is some secret in you, akin to my clear beauty,
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 1: silently responsive to all that circles you. This bare tree says,
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 1: austere and stark and leafless, split with frost, resonant in
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 1: the wind, with rigid branches flung out against the sky.
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 1: This tall tree says, there is some cold austerity in you,
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 1: a frozen strength, with long roots gnarled on rocks, fertile
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 1: and deep. You bide your time, are patient, serene in silence,
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 1: bare to outward seeming, concealing what reserves a power and beauty?
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 1: What teeming aprils chorus of leaves on leaves. These houses say,
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 1: such walls in walls as ours, Such streets of walls,
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: solid and smooth of surface, Such hills and cities of walls,
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 1: Walls upon walls motionless in the sun or dark with rain.
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 1: Walls pierced with windows where the light may enter wall's
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 1: windowless where darkness is desired. Towers and labyrinths and domes
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: and chambers, amazing, deep recesses, dark and dark. All these
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: are like the walls which shape your spirit. You move,
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 1: are warm within them, laugh within them, proud of their
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 1: depth and strength, or sally from them when you are
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 1: bold to blow great horns at the world. This deep,
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 1: cool room, with shadowed walls and ceiling, tranquil and cloisterral,
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 1: fragrant of my mind, This cool room says, just such
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: a room, have you? It weighs you always at the
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 1: tops of stairways, with drawn remote familiar to your uses,
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 1: where you may cease pretense and be yourself. And this
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 1: embroidery hanging on this wall, hung there forever, these so
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 1: soundless glidings of dragons, golden scaled sheer birds of asure,
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: coilings of leaves in pale vermilion griffins drawing their rainbow
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 1: wings through involutions of maul chrystanthemums and lotus flowers. This
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 1: goblin wood, where someone cries enchantment, this says just such
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 1: an involuted beauty of thought and coiling thought, dream linked
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 1: with dream, image to image, gliding wreathing fires soundlessly cries
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 1: enchantment in your mind. You need but sit and close
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 1: your eyes a moment to see these deep designs unfold themselves,
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 1: and so all things discern me, Name me, Praise me.
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 1: I walk in a world of silent voices praising. And
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 1: in this world you see me like a wraith, blown
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 1: softly here and there on silent winds. Praise me, I say,
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 1: And look not in a glass, but in your eyes,
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 1: to see my image there or in your mind. You smile.
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: I am contented. You look at me with interest unfeigned,
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: and listen. I am pleased, or else alone. I watch
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 1: thin bubbles veering brightly upward from unknown depths, my silver
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 1: thoughts ascending, saying now this, now, that hinting of all things,
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 1: dreams and desires, the laities, regrets, faint ghosts of memory,
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 1: strange recognitions, but all with one deep meaning. This is I.
• 1:57:23
  Speaker 1: This is the glistening secret holy eye, this silver winged wonder, insubstantial,
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: this singing ghost and hearing. I am warmed. You see
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: me moving then, as one who moves forever, at the
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 1: center of his circle, a circle filled with light, and
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 1: into it convulging shapes from darkness, loom gigantic, or huddle
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 1: in dark again. A clock ticks clearly, A gas jet
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 1: steadily whirs. Light streams across me. Two church bells with
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 1: alternate beats strike nine. And through these things, my pencil
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 1: pushes softly to weave gray webs of lines on this
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 1: Snow falls and melts, the eaves make liquid music. Black
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 1: wheel tracks line the snow touched street. I turn and
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 1: look one instant at the half dark gardens, where skeleton
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 1: elm trees reach with frozen gesture above unsteady lamps with
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 1: black boughs flung against a luminous, snow filled gray gold
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 1: sky beauty. I cry, my feet move on and take
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 1: me between dark walls with orange squares for windows. Beauty
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 1: beheld like someone half forgotten, remembered with slow pang as
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: one neglected. While I am frustrate, life has beaten me.
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 1: The thing I strongly seized has turned to darkness, and
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 1: darkness rides my heart. These skeleton elm trees leaning against
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 1: that gray gold, snow filled sky beauty, they say, And
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 1: at the edge of darkness extend vane arms in a
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 1: frozen gesture of protest. A clock ticks softly, A gas
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 1: jet steadily whirs. The pencil meets its shadow upon clear paper,
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 1: voices are raised a door is slammed. The lovers murmuring
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 1: in an adjacent room grow silent, The eaves make liquid music.
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: Hours have passed and nothing changes, and everything is changed.
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 1: Exultation is dead, Beauty is harlot and walks the streets.
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 1: The thing I strongly seized has turned to darkness, and
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 1: darkness rides my heart. If you could solve this darkness,
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 1: you would have me. This causeless melancholy that comes with rain,
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 1: or on such days as this, when large wet snowflakes
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 1: drop heavily with rain, whence rises this while so and
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 1: so this morning, when I saw him, seemed much preoccupied
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: and would not smile. And you I saw too much,
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 1: and you too little. And the word I chose for you,
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 1: the golden word, the word that should have struck so
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 1: deep in purpose and set so many doors of wish
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 1: wide open. You let it fall and would not stoop
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 1: for it, and smile smiled at me, and would not
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 1: let me guess whether you saw it fall. These things,
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 1: together with other things still slighter, wove to music, and this,
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 1: in time, drew up dark memories. And there I stand
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 1: this music breaks and bleeds me, turning all frustrate dreams
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 1: to chords and discords, faces and griefs, and words in
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 1: sunlit evenings, and chains self forge that will not break
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 1: nor lengthen, and cries that none can answer. Few will
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 1: hear at these things meaning? Or would you see more
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 1: clearly if I should say my second wife grows tedious,
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 1: or like gay tulip, keeps no perfume secret, or one
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 1: day dies eventless as another, leaving the seeker still unsatisfied
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 1: and more convinced life yields no satisfaction, or seek too hard,
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 1: the sight at length grows callous, and beauty shines in vain.
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 1: These things you ask for, these you shall have. So
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 1: talking with my first wife at the dark end of evening,
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 1: when she leaned and smiled at me with blue eyes,
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 1: weaving webs of finest fire, revolving me in scarlet, calling
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 1: to mind remote and small successions of countless other evenings ending,
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 1: So I smiled and met her kiss, and wished her dead,
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 1: dead of a sudden sickness, or by my hand savagely killed.
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 1: I saw her in her coffin. I saw her coffin
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 1: borne downstairs with trouble. I saw myself alone there, palely watching,
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 1: wearing a mask of grief so deeply acted that grief
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: itself possessed me. Time would pass, and I should meet
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 1: this girl, my second wife, and drop the mask of
• 2:01:40
  Speaker 1: grief for one of passion. Forward, we moved to meet,
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 1: half hesitating, we drown in each other's eyes. We laugh,
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 1: We talk, looking now here now there, faintly pretending we
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 1: do not hear the powerful, pulsing prelude roaring beneath our words.
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 1: The time approaches, we lean, unbalanced. The mute last glance
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 1: between us, profoundly searching, opening, asking, yielding, is steadily met.
• 2:02:06
  Speaker 1: Our two lives draw together. What are you thinking of?
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 1: My first wife's voice scattered these ghosts, Oh nothing, nothing much,
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 1: just wondering where we'd be two years from now and
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 1: what we might be doing. And then remorse turned sharply
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 1: in my mind to sudden pity, and pity to echoed love,
• 2:02:26
  Speaker 1: and one more evening drew to the usual end of
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 1: sleep in silence. And as it is with this, so
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 1: too with all things. The pages of our lives are
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 1: blurred polympsest. New lines are wreathed on old lines, half
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 1: erasd and those on older still, and so forever the
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 1: old shines through the new and colors it. What's new,
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 1: what's old? All things have double meanings, all things return.
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 1: I'd write a line with passion, or touch a woman's hand,
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 1: or plumb a doctrine, only to find the same thing before,
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 1: only to know the same thing comes tomorrow. This curious,
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 1: riddled dream I dreamed last night, six years ago. I
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 1: dreamed it just as now the same man stooped to me.
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 1: We rose from darkness and broke the accustomed order of
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 1: our days and struck for the morning, world and warmth
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 1: and freedom. What does it mean? Why is this hint? Repeated?
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 1: What darkness does it spring from? Seek to end? You
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 1: see me, then pass up and down these stairways, now
• 2:03:29
  Speaker 1: through a beam of light, and now through shadow, pursuing
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 1: silent ends, no rest. There is no more for me
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 1: than you. I move here, always from quiet room to room,
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 1: from wall to wall, searching and plodding, weaving a web
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 1: of days. This is my house. And now perhaps you
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 1: know me. Yet I confess for all my best intentions.
• 2:03:52
  Speaker 1: Once more I have deceived you. I withhold the one
• 2:03:55
  Speaker 1: thing precious, the one dark thing that guides me, and
• 2:03:58
  Speaker 1: I have spread two so snares for you of lies.
• 2:04:04
  Speaker 1: Section four counterpoint. Two rooms. He in the room above,
• 2:04:10
  Speaker 1: grown old and tired, she in the room below, his
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 1: floor her ceiling pursue their separate dreams. He turns his
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 1: light and throws himself on the bed, face down in laughter.
• 2:04:21
  Speaker 1: She by the window smiles at a starlight night. His
• 2:04:25
  Speaker 1: watch the same, He has heard these cycles of ages,
• 2:04:28
  Speaker 1: wearily chimes at seconds. Beneath his pillow. The clock upon
• 2:04:32
  Speaker 1: her mantelpiece strikes nine. The night wears on. She hears
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 1: dull steps above her, The world whirs on, New stars
• 2:04:40
  Speaker 1: come up to shine His youth. Far off, he sees
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 1: it brightly, walking in a golden cloud, wings flashing about it,
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 1: Darkness walls it around with dripping, enormous walls, old age,
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 1: far off her death, What do they matter? Down the
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 1: smooth purple night, a streaked star falls. Here's slow steps
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 1: in the street. They chime like music. They climb to
• 2:05:03
  Speaker 1: her heart, They break in flower and beauty along her veins.
• 2:05:07
  Speaker 1: They glisten and ring and burn. He hears his own
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 1: slow steps tread down to silence. Far off they pass,
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 1: He knows they will never return. Far off on a smooth,
• 2:05:18
  Speaker 1: dark road, he hears them faintly, the road like a
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 1: somber river, quietly flowing moves among murmurous walls. A deeper
• 2:05:26
  Speaker 1: breath swells them to sound. He hears his steps more clearly,
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 1: and death seems nearer to him, or he to death?
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 1: What's death? She smiles? The cool stone hurts her elbows.
• 2:05:39
  Speaker 1: The last of the rain drops gather and full from
• 2:05:42
  Speaker 1: elm boughs. She sees them glisten and break. The arc
• 2:05:46
  Speaker 1: lamp sings. The new leaves dip in the warm, wet
• 2:05:49
  Speaker 1: air and fragrance. A sparrow whirs to the eaves and
• 2:05:52
  Speaker 1: shakes his wings. What's death? What's death? The spring returns
• 2:05:57
  Speaker 1: like music, The trees are like dark lovers dream in starlight.
• 2:06:01
  Speaker 1: The soft gray clouds go over the stars like dreams.
• 2:06:05
  Speaker 1: The cool stone wounds her arms, to pain, to pleasure.
• 2:06:09
  Speaker 1: Under the lamp, A circle of wet streak gleams under
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 1: the lamp, A circle of wet streak gleams, and death
• 2:06:17
  Speaker 1: seems far away, a thing of roses, a golden portal
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 1: where golden music closes. Death seems far away, and spring
• 2:06:25
  Speaker 1: returns the countless singing of lovers, and spring returns to stay.
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 1: He in the room above, grown old and tired, flings
• 2:06:33
  Speaker 1: himself on the bed, face down in laughter, and clenches
• 2:06:37
  Speaker 1: his hands and remembers and desires to die. And she
• 2:06:41
  Speaker 1: by the window smiles. At a night of starlight, the
• 2:06:44
  Speaker 1: soft gray clouds go slowly across the sky. Section five
• 2:06:51
  Speaker 1: The Bitter Love Song. No, I shall not say why
• 2:06:54
  Speaker 1: it is that I love you? Why do you ask me?
• 2:06:57
  Speaker 1: Save for vanity? Surely you would not have me like
• 2:07:00
  Speaker 1: a mirror. Say yes. Your hair curls darkly back from
• 2:07:04
  Speaker 1: the temples. Your mouth has a humorous, tremulous, half shy sweetness.
• 2:07:08
  Speaker 1: Your eyes are april gray with jonquils in them. No,
• 2:07:12
  Speaker 1: if I tell it all, I shall tell in silence.
• 2:07:15
  Speaker 1: I'll say My childhood broke through chords of music, or
• 2:07:18
  Speaker 1: were they chords of sun wherein fell shadows or silences.
• 2:07:23
  Speaker 1: I rose through seas of sunlight, or sometimes found a
• 2:07:26
  Speaker 1: darkness stooped above me, with wings of death and a
• 2:07:29
  Speaker 1: face of cold, clear beauty. I lay in the warm
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 1: sweet grass on a blue May morning, my chin in
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 1: a dandelion, my hands in clover, and drowsed there like
• 2:07:39
  Speaker 1: a bee. Blue days behind me, stretched like a chain
• 2:07:43
  Speaker 1: of deep blue pools of magic, enchanted, silent timeless days
• 2:07:48
  Speaker 1: before me, murmured of blue sea mornings, noons of gold,
• 2:07:52
  Speaker 1: green evenings streaked with lilac, bee starred nights, confused, soft
• 2:07:57
  Speaker 1: clouds of music fled above me. Sharp shafts of music
• 2:08:01
  Speaker 1: dazzled my eyes and pierced me. I ran and turned
• 2:08:05
  Speaker 1: and spun and danced in the sunlight, shrank sometimes from
• 2:08:08
  Speaker 1: the freezing silence of beauty, or crept once more to
• 2:08:11
  Speaker 1: the warm, white cave of sleep. No, I shall not
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 1: say this is why I praise you, because you say
• 2:08:17
  Speaker 1: such wise things or such foolish you would not have
• 2:08:21
  Speaker 1: me say what you know better. Let me instead be silent,
• 2:08:24
  Speaker 1: only saying my childhood lives in me, or half lives rather.
• 2:08:28
  Speaker 1: And if I close my eyes, cool chords of music
• 2:08:31
  Speaker 1: flow up to me, long chords of wind and sunlight,
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 1: Shadows of intricate vines on sunlit walls, deep bells beating
• 2:08:39
  Speaker 1: with eons of blue between them, grass blades, leagues apart
• 2:08:43
  Speaker 1: with worlds between them, walls rushing up to heaven with
• 2:08:46
  Speaker 1: stars upon them. I lay in my bed, and through
• 2:08:49
  Speaker 1: the tall night window saw the green lightning plunging among
• 2:08:53
  Speaker 1: the clouds, and heard the harsh rain storm at the
• 2:08:56
  Speaker 1: panes and roof. How should I know? How should I
• 2:08:59
  Speaker 1: now remember? What? Half dreamed? Great wings curved and sang
• 2:09:03
  Speaker 1: above me? What wings like swords? What eyes with the
• 2:09:06
  Speaker 1: dread night in them? This I shall say. I lay
• 2:09:10
  Speaker 1: by the hot white sand dunes. Small yellow flowers, sapless
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 1: and squat and spiny, stared at the sky and silently
• 2:09:18
  Speaker 1: there above us, day after day, beyond our dreams and knowledge,
• 2:09:21
  Speaker 1: presences swept and over us, streamed their shadows, swift and
• 2:09:26
  Speaker 1: blue or dark? What did they mean? What sinister threat
• 2:09:29
  Speaker 1: of power? What hint of beauty? Prelude to? What gigantic
• 2:09:33
  Speaker 1: music or subtle? Only I know? These things leaned over me,
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 1: brooded upon me, paused, went flowing, softly, glided and passed.
• 2:09:42
  Speaker 1: I loved, I desired, I hated, I struggled, I yielded
• 2:09:46
  Speaker 1: and loved. Was warm to blossom You, when your eyes
• 2:09:50
  Speaker 1: have evening sunlight in them? Set these dunes before me,
• 2:09:54
  Speaker 1: these salt bright flowers, these presences. I drowse, They stream
• 2:09:57
  Speaker 1: above me. I struggle, I yield and love. I am
• 2:10:00
  Speaker 1: warm to dream. You are the window if I could tell,
• 2:10:04
  Speaker 1: I'd tell you through which I see a clear, far
• 2:10:07
  Speaker 1: world of sunlight you are the silence. If you could hear,
• 2:10:11
  Speaker 1: you'd hear me in which I remember a thin, still
• 2:10:14
  Speaker 1: whisper of singing. It is not you. I laugh for you.
• 2:10:17
  Speaker 1: I touch my hands that touch you, suddenly touch white cobwebs,
• 2:10:22
  Speaker 1: coldly silvered, heavily silvered with dewdrops, and clover heavy with
• 2:10:27
  Speaker 1: rain and cold green grass. Section six Cinema. As evening falls,
• 2:10:35
  Speaker 1: the walls grow luminous and warm, The walls tremble and glow,
• 2:10:39
  Speaker 1: the lives within them moving, moving like music, secret and
• 2:10:43
  Speaker 1: rich and warm. How shall we live to night? Where
• 2:10:46
  Speaker 1: shall we turn to? What new light or darkness? Yearn
• 2:10:49
  Speaker 1: A thousand winding stairs lead down before us, and one
• 2:10:52
  Speaker 1: by one in myriads we descend by lamp lit flowered walls,
• 2:10:57
  Speaker 1: long balustrades, through half lit holes which reach no end.
• 2:11:01
  Speaker 1: Take my arm, then, you or you or you, and
• 2:11:03
  Speaker 1: let us walk abroad on the solid air. And look
• 2:11:06
  Speaker 1: how the organist's head in silhouette leans to the lamp
• 2:11:10
  Speaker 1: lit music's orange square, the dim globed lamps, the loomin
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 1: rows of faces, rows of hands and arms, and hungry eyes.
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 1: They have hurried down from a myriad's secret places, from
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 1: windy chambers next to the skies. The music comes upon us.
• 2:11:25
  Speaker 1: It shakes the darkness. It shakes the darkness in our minds,
• 2:11:29
  Speaker 1: and brilliant figures suddenly fill the darkness down the white
• 2:11:32
  Speaker 1: shaft of light, They run through darkness and in our
• 2:11:35
  Speaker 1: hearts a dazzling dream unwinds. Take my hand, then walk
• 2:11:39
  Speaker 1: with me by the slow, soundless crashings of a sea
• 2:11:43
  Speaker 1: down miles on miles of glistening mirror like sand. Take
• 2:11:47
  Speaker 1: my hand and walk with me once more, by crumbling walls,
• 2:11:51
  Speaker 1: up moldering stairs, where gray stemmed Ivy clings to hear
• 2:11:55
  Speaker 1: forgotten bells, as evening falls rippling above us invisibly their
• 2:12:00
  Speaker 1: slowly widening rings. Did you once love me? Did you
• 2:12:03
  Speaker 1: bear a name? Did you once stand before me without shame?
• 2:12:07
  Speaker 1: Take my hand. Your face is one I know I
• 2:12:10
  Speaker 1: loved you long ago. You are like music long forgotten
• 2:12:14
  Speaker 1: suddenly come to mind. You are like spring returned through snow. Once.
• 2:12:19
  Speaker 1: I know I walked with you in starlight, and many
• 2:12:22
  Speaker 1: nights I slept and dreamed of you. Come. Let us
• 2:12:25
  Speaker 1: climb once more these stairs of starlight, this midnight stream
• 2:12:29
  Speaker 1: of cloud flung blue music murmurs beneath us like a sea,
• 2:12:34
  Speaker 1: and faints to a ghostly whisper. Come with me? Are
• 2:12:37
  Speaker 1: you still doubtful of me? Hesitant? Still fearful? Perhaps that
• 2:12:41
  Speaker 1: I may yet remember what you would gladly if you
• 2:12:43
  Speaker 1: could forget. You were unfaithful once you met your lover,
• 2:12:47
  Speaker 1: still in your heart, you bare that red eyed ember,
• 2:12:50
  Speaker 1: and I was silent. You remember my silence. Yet you
• 2:12:54
  Speaker 1: knew as well as I I could not kill him,
• 2:12:57
  Speaker 1: nor touch him with hot hands, nor yet with hate. No,
• 2:13:01
  Speaker 1: And it was not you I saw with anger. Instead,
• 2:13:04
  Speaker 1: I rose and beat as steel wolled, fate cried till
• 2:13:07
  Speaker 1: I lay exhausted, sick, unfriended, that life so seeming sure,
• 2:13:12
  Speaker 1: and love so certain, should loose such tricks be so
• 2:13:16
  Speaker 1: abruptly ended, ring down so suddenly and unlooked for curtain?
• 2:13:20
  Speaker 1: How could I find it in my heart to hurt you,
• 2:13:23
  Speaker 1: you whom this love could hurt much more than I. No,
• 2:13:27
  Speaker 1: you were pitiful, and I gave you pity, and only
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 1: hated you when I saw you cry. We were two dupes.
• 2:13:33
  Speaker 1: If I could give forgiveness, had I the right, I
• 2:13:35
  Speaker 1: should forgive you? Now we were two dupes. Come let
• 2:13:39
  Speaker 1: us walk in starlight and feed our griefs. We do
• 2:13:42
  Speaker 1: not break, but bow. Take my hand, then come with
• 2:13:45
  Speaker 1: me by the white, shadowy crashings of a sea. Look
• 2:13:49
  Speaker 1: how the long volumes of foam unfold to spread their
• 2:13:52
  Speaker 1: maudled shimmer along the sand. Take my hand. Do not
• 2:13:56
  Speaker 1: remember how these depths are cold, nor how when you
• 2:13:59
  Speaker 1: are dead, green leagues of sea will glimmer above your head.
• 2:14:03
  Speaker 1: You lean your face upon your hands and cry. The
• 2:14:06
  Speaker 1: blown sand whispers about your feet. Terrible seems it now
• 2:14:10
  Speaker 1: to die, terrible now, with life so incomplete, to turn
• 2:14:14
  Speaker 1: away from the balconies and the music, the sunlit afternoons,
• 2:14:18
  Speaker 1: to hear behind you there afar off, laughter lost in
• 2:14:21
  Speaker 1: a stirring of sand among dry dunes. Die not sadly,
• 2:14:26
  Speaker 1: you whom life has beaten. Lift your face up, laughing,
• 2:14:29
  Speaker 1: Die like a queen. Take cold flowers of foam in
• 2:14:33
  Speaker 1: your warm white fingers. Death's but a change of sky
• 2:14:36
  Speaker 1: from blue to green. As evening falls, the walls grow
• 2:14:40
  Speaker 1: luminous and warm, The walls tremble and glow. The music
• 2:14:44
  Speaker 1: breathes upon us, The rayed white shaft plays over our
• 2:14:48
  Speaker 1: heads like magic, and to and fro. We move and
• 2:14:51
  Speaker 1: lean and change you in a world grown strange. Laugh
• 2:14:55
  Speaker 1: at a darkness, clench your hands, despairing, smash your glass
• 2:14:59
  Speaker 1: on a floor no longer caring, sinks suddenly down and cry.
• 2:15:03
  Speaker 1: You hear the applause that greets your latest rival. You
• 2:15:06
  Speaker 1: are forgotten, your rival? Who knows? Is I? I laugh
• 2:15:10
  Speaker 1: in the warm, bright light of answering laughter. I am
• 2:15:13
  Speaker 1: inspired and young. And though I see you sitting alone
• 2:15:16
  Speaker 1: there dark with shut eyes crying, I bask in the
• 2:15:20
  Speaker 1: light and in your hate of me failure. Will the
• 2:15:24
  Speaker 1: time comes soon or later? The night must come, and
• 2:15:27
  Speaker 1: I'll be one who clings desperately to hold the applause,
• 2:15:31
  Speaker 1: one instant to keep some youngster waiting in the wings.
• 2:15:35
  Speaker 1: The music changes tone, A room is darkened, someone is moving,
• 2:15:39
  Speaker 1: The crack of white light widens, and all is dark again,
• 2:15:42
  Speaker 1: till suddenly falls a wandering disc of light on floor
• 2:15:45
  Speaker 1: and walls, winks out, returns again, climbs and descends, gleams
• 2:15:51
  Speaker 1: on a clock. A glass shrinks back to darkness, and then,
• 2:15:54
  Speaker 1: at last, in the chaos of that place, dazzles like
• 2:15:58
  Speaker 1: frozen fire on your clear face. Well I have found you,
• 2:16:03
  Speaker 1: We have met at last. Now you shall not escape
• 2:16:06
  Speaker 1: me in your eyes, I see the horrible huddlings of
• 2:16:09
  Speaker 1: your past. All you remember, blackens, utters, cries, reaches far
• 2:16:14
  Speaker 1: hands and faint. I hold the light close to your cheek.
• 2:16:18
  Speaker 1: Watch the pained pupils shrink, Watch the vile ghosts of
• 2:16:21
  Speaker 1: all you vilely think Now, all the hatreds of my
• 2:16:25
  Speaker 1: life have met to hold high carnival. We do not speak.
• 2:16:29
  Speaker 1: My fingers find the well loved throat. They seek and
• 2:16:32
  Speaker 1: press and fling you down. And then forget who plays
• 2:16:36
  Speaker 1: for me? What sudden drums keep time to the ecstatic
• 2:16:39
  Speaker 1: rhythm of my crime? What flute shrills out as moonlight
• 2:16:43
  Speaker 1: strikes the floor, What vile in so faintly cries, seeing
• 2:16:47
  Speaker 1: how strangely in the moon he lies. The room grows
• 2:16:50
  Speaker 1: dark once more, A crack of white light narrows around
• 2:16:54
  Speaker 1: the door, and all is silent except a slow complaining
• 2:16:57
  Speaker 1: of flutes and violins, like music waning. Take my hand,
• 2:17:01
  Speaker 1: then walk with me by the slow, soundless crashings of
• 2:17:04
  Speaker 1: a sea. Look how white these shells are on the sand.
• 2:17:08
  Speaker 1: Take my hand and watch the waves run inward from
• 2:17:12
  Speaker 1: the sky line upon foaming line, to plunge and die.
• 2:17:16
  Speaker 1: The music that bound our lives is lost behind us poultry.
• 2:17:20
  Speaker 1: It seems here in this wind swung place, motionless, under
• 2:17:24
  Speaker 1: the sky's vast vault of azure, we stand in a
• 2:17:28
  Speaker 1: terror of beauty. Face to face the dry grass creeks
• 2:17:31
  Speaker 1: in the wind. The blown sand whispers, the soft sand
• 2:17:35
  Speaker 1: seas on the dunes. The clear grains glisten. Once they
• 2:17:39
  Speaker 1: were rock a chaos of golden boulders, Now they are
• 2:17:43
  Speaker 1: blown by the wind. We stand and listen to the
• 2:17:46
  Speaker 1: sliding of grain upon timeless grain, and feel our lives
• 2:17:50
  Speaker 1: go past like a whisper of pain. Have I not
• 2:17:53
  Speaker 1: seen you? Have we not met before? Here on this
• 2:17:55
  Speaker 1: sun and sea wreck'd shore. You shade your sea gray
• 2:17:59
  Speaker 1: eyes with a sunlit hand, and peer at me. Far
• 2:18:02
  Speaker 1: sea gulls in your eyes flash in the sun. Go down.
• 2:18:06
  Speaker 1: I hear slow sand, and shrink to nothing beneath blue,
• 2:18:09
  Speaker 1: brilliant skies. The music ends, the screen grows dark. We
• 2:18:14
  Speaker 1: hurry to go our devious secret ways forgetting those many lives.
• 2:18:18
  Speaker 1: We loved, We laughed, we killed, We danced in fire,
• 2:18:22
  Speaker 1: we drowned in a whirl of sea waves. The flutes
• 2:18:25
  Speaker 1: are stilled, and a thousand dreams are stilled. Whose body
• 2:18:28
  Speaker 1: have I found beside dark waters, the cold white body,
• 2:18:32
  Speaker 1: garlanded with seaweed, staring with wide eyes at the sky.
• 2:18:37
  Speaker 1: I bent my head above it and cried in silence.
• 2:18:40
  Speaker 1: Only the things I dreamed of heard my cry. Once
• 2:18:43
  Speaker 1: I loved, and she I loved was darkened. Again, I loved,
• 2:18:46
  Speaker 1: and love itself was darkened. Vainly We follow the circle
• 2:18:50
  Speaker 1: of shadowy days. The screen at last grows dark, The
• 2:18:53
  Speaker 1: flutes are silent, the doors of night are closed. We
• 2:18:57
  Speaker 1: go our ways. Section and seven. The sun goes down
• 2:19:02
  Speaker 1: in a cold, pale flare of light. The trees grow dark,
• 2:19:06
  Speaker 1: the shadows lean to the east, and lights wink out
• 2:19:09
  Speaker 1: through the windows. One by one. A clamor of frosty
• 2:19:13
  Speaker 1: sirens mourns at the night. Pale slate, gray clouds whirl
• 2:19:17
  Speaker 1: up from the sunken sun, and the wandering one. The
• 2:19:20
  Speaker 1: inquisitive dreamer of dreams, the eternal asker of answers, stands
• 2:19:24
  Speaker 1: in the street and lifts his palms for the first
• 2:19:28
  Speaker 1: cold ghost of rain. The purple lights leap down the
• 2:19:31
  Speaker 1: hill before him. The gorgeous night has begun again. I
• 2:19:35
  Speaker 1: will ask them all, I will ask them all their dreams.
• 2:19:38
  Speaker 1: I will hold my light above them, and seek their faces.
• 2:19:41
  Speaker 1: I will hear them whisper, invisible in their veins. The
• 2:19:45
  Speaker 1: eternal asker of answers becomes as the darkness, or as
• 2:19:49
  Speaker 1: a wind blown over a myriad forest, or as the
• 2:19:52
  Speaker 1: numberless voices of long drawn rains. We hear him and
• 2:19:56
  Speaker 1: take him among us, like a wind of music, like
• 2:19:59
  Speaker 1: the ghost of the music we have somewhere heard. We
• 2:20:02
  Speaker 1: crowd through the streets in a dazzle of pallid lamp light.
• 2:20:06
  Speaker 1: We pour in a sinister mass. We ascend a stair
• 2:20:09
  Speaker 1: with laughter, and cry with word upon murmured word. We flow,
• 2:20:13
  Speaker 1: we descend, We turn, and the eternal dreamer moves on
• 2:20:17
  Speaker 1: among us like light, Like evening air. Good night, good night,
• 2:20:21
  Speaker 1: good night. We go our ways. The rain runs over
• 2:20:24
  Speaker 1: the pavement before our feet. The cold rain falls, the
• 2:20:28
  Speaker 1: rain sings. We walk, we run, we ride, We turn
• 2:20:31
  Speaker 1: our faces to what the eternal evening brings. Our hands
• 2:20:36
  Speaker 1: are hot and row with the stones we have laid.
• 2:20:39
  Speaker 1: We have built a tower of stone high into the sky.
• 2:20:42
  Speaker 1: We have built a city of towers. Our hands are light,
• 2:20:46
  Speaker 1: they are singing with emptiness. Our souls are light. They
• 2:20:49
  Speaker 1: have shaken a burden of ours? What did we build
• 2:20:52
  Speaker 1: it for? Was it all a dream? Ghostly above us?
• 2:20:56
  Speaker 1: In lamp light? The towers gleam, and after a while
• 2:20:59
  Speaker 1: they will fall to dust and rain, or else we
• 2:21:02
  Speaker 1: will tear them down with impatient hands, and hew rock
• 2:21:06
  Speaker 1: out of the earth and build them again. End of
• 2:21:10
  Speaker 1: Part four recording by expatriate in Bangor, Maine. End of
• 2:21:16
  Speaker 1: the House of Dust, A symphony by Conrad Aiken.