On the Ground

When the collie saw the child break from the crowd, he gave chase, and since they both were border-crossers, they left this world. We were then made of— affronted by—silence. The train passed Poste 5, Paris, late arrival, no luck, no enlarging commentary magnified in any glass. “The ineffable is everywhere in language” the speaker had said in the huge hall where I sat amongst coughers, students, in the late February of that year, at the end of a sinuous inquiry on sense and sound— “and very close to the ground,” he’d said. Like mist risen above the feet of animals in a far field north of here.