WHITE SKY Fanny Dirk Luve stood on the Bridge where she could see the river up and down. --I know what I am going to do. I know. Not die. Not going to see--What can I--? Since she knew, “Why! Why!” she said aloud. She searched the world trying to find the anguish--I am not going to die!... of what she was to do.--Why not? But she knew that.... Not die. Not see her child.... She saw the river. The river came to her from trees. The city, a raised shadow near her eyes, pulled her eyelids down away from there beyond, where she lay once on her back. She lies on her back. Under: grass, roots thrusting in erection, spilling in bud. Over: he.... From these trees came the river ... from this past ... flowing like the dimension that was time upon her standing on the Bridge. Time and the river were one. It swept upon her from the past of trees, past of sweet love, thrust against her, surging resistless; it was going to overwhelm her. Where? Time and the river flung in a stroke eternally sure against her standing dry in anguish--love an edged steel--on the Bridge. She turned. It turned her. Time and the river sweeping from rootage and trees struck her now in the back. She saw where it flowed. It flowed into flat land. A rugose strewing of rust and yard and factory was the flat land. The city in the heights fell down from its proud mansions--through dawdling soiled cottages, through clustered shanties--fell to the flat land of rust and coal. Slow brackish river here, turmoiled ... full. It swirled in oil, it recoiled from the harsh thrusts of the makings of men--of junkyards. River and time stole through this newness of noise and filth away, in a filmy scarf of smoke-bitten locusts, beyond the eyes of Fanny. She felt in her back the subtle thrust of a beginning world of high-banked trees free in the air: how it fell, grew, now hurling through noise, dirt, misery--making, struggle to make!--to beyond her eyes that lay so wistfully against the dying locusts, unable to fall farther. And at her side the city fell along. From its secluded shadow--warmed mansions fell with her along into a rising clatter of smoke, a foam of steel, huddling men moving.... Mist. Black-purple mist ... red rust ... the shriek of wheels crunching resistless against and upon steel lines thrust resistless also. Fanny left the Bridge.... * * * * * In one hand of Fanny was a valise. Her other hand was a fist. Her mouth asking for a ticket shut fast. Her hand counting change shut fast. She sat in a train, shut. The moving train worked at her, stole up in her, swayed, shook, pried her open. Her feet in the opening rhythm of the train. Her legs. Her loins. Warm loins. Breasts, not so frozen, melting. Her head, erect on her frozen breast, now plunged in their melting. She sat in a train, open.... She lay in a hot bath of her melted pain and life, flowing within it, open.