From the Dust Returned

Do we sleep by day and swarm-glide the splendid night?

“I’ll tell you what you’re dying from!” she whispered. “You suffer a disease—of people!”

She was all the senses of all the creatures in the world. She was all the motion-picture houses and stage-play theaters and all the art galleries of all time.

Everybody was embracing and crying and thinking how the world was becoming less a place for them.

We must not marry with ordinary folk. We’d lose our dark souls if we did.

Before the tumult of wings, the collision of fogs and mists and souls like ribboned smokes, she saw her own soul and hungers.
Make haste, she thought. Oh, quickly now! Run forth. Fly fast. For what?
“I want to be in love!”

These are not the sole reasons, but at the heart of morning welcomes and afternoon laughters is the promise of farewell. In the gray muzzle of an old dog we see goodbye. In the tired face of an old friend we read long journeys beyond returns.

And indeed, wandering in the upper keeps of the ancient tomb was like surviving in a dim sarcophagus in which memories, transparent wings folded, lay piled in ribboned bundles, in files, packets, shrouded figures, strewn shadows. Here and there, a special bright memory, like a single ray of amber light, struck in upon and shaped a golden hour, a summer day

“Torches and fire. Nothing stays. All burns.”

Sleeping all night, eating breakfast, and then sleeping again all day.