Shipwreck in Haven, Part Four

I Fate is cleverer than the king of Babylon. Shadow of yew fall through windows onto the floor of the nave and touch the pillars with tattered shade. You claim the dearest wish of your life is to sink into a soul-freezing situation of horror.  The music of a crash caught in the hollow of a wooded hillside. 2 Grave, questioning sweep—chiefly the weird that arouses our keenest hopes. The garden of dreams contains a summerhouse, hazy period of my growth. There are bodies, not greatly extended, called seas nevertheless, because of their depth and violence. I’ve some little doubt about this ceremony entirely embedded in a cup of grassy hills. 3 Pardon me for loitering. I was sleeping soundly when I was roused by the loud clang of what turned out to be a large brass candlestick, flung against the banister. Unprotected, destitute of the means of self-defense, you hug to yourself the consciousness of vanished beauty. The sea is un- certain, on the main and also along the coast. 4 Strange rooms. Through these experimental years, who can describe beauty in the dead of night? Complain of frivolity or of portraits exactly like ghosts. The waters of the great surrounding sea will completely evaporate when the sun opens the fifth of its seven eyes. Oh yes, I take pleasure in backgrounds, bringing them forward. 5 These are only a few of many legendary details, called from the distant future where each thing has its end, including sea, sun, the eyes. You live in another season—even now I feel acrobatic instincts. Large strange rooms. A silver cup from his household plate, a sky of the same gray tones, a great wilderness of books. 6 When the sea subsides into utter calm, changing clouds caught in its clarity, then fishermen say the sea is thinking about itself. A dark back room, looking down upon a narrow courtyard—waking out of some dreams of specters, bellowing the most frightful shrieks, forgetting only at the sound of somebody’s voice. 7 You light me to bed with your light, and never a night but I am prey to ghostly visions—a tenderness no usual in my family. The lion pauses a certain space of time, amid a sea of divers thoughts, choppy half desires, memoranda of search and hunger, very peculiar ideas of the world.