Male friendship -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Young men -- Fiction
A batch of painted sheets were in her arms. Her water-colors, her
incomprehensible confessions. She laid them forth on the table, looked
long at them. They were very lovely, these delirious designs, these
flauntings of form and color. Color rose in them to form, form faded and
died away to the realms of color. But she looked at them and shook her
head. They meant nothing to her.
“What nonsense,” she breathed.
Then: “Perhaps some of my statues may live. That first bronze----”
She swept the sketches back into her arms, she thrust them into the
hearth. It was cold and black. In a moment it blazed. But the sheets
burned slowly, imperfectly. The fire went out. She had to scatter them
and work upon them and light them several times with many matches before
they were ash.
At last it was done. Stubborn confessional!
She laughed at the daubed papers that had not wanted to die.
She turned out the light and went once more into the bedroom. She opened
the window wide.
The balmy night swept over her head into the room. Street slumbered.
Brutal lines of the street seemed broken into curves: its hard stillness
rose now and swayed, fell murmuring beyond her eyes.
Cornelia leaned heavy on her arms. She could feel the weight of her body
against her elbows. This was the night and this was the world. The one
world she had ever known: the one night also.
Why had all of it been? She saw herself. She must have been above and
beyond herself; she saw herself from the back. She was leaning there, a
slender girl, out of the window. She was a narrow form, swathed in warm
brown silk-brocade, with a neck that was a little too long for such
slight shoulders. And her elbows ached. And the window framing her led
into the world. It was a round place: it went twirling about in
interminable ether. It flung near blazing monsters like the Sun, that
also were lost in the black, blind spaces so that their conflagrations
were sparks flecking the universal slumber. Upon this twirling ball was
life. Everywhere she looked, was life. One spot of earth was a city of
creation, one drop of water was a multitudinous welter. Here, somehow,
she. She could look beyond herself and the window and the gyring City.
She could see the world and the stars and the Sun lost like specks in
the universal slumber.
This was her yearning. Let her sleep! She was tired. Let her be one with
slumber beyond creation. Out of slumber creation had come, creation
which was a scum of eggs on a black flower. Let her brush it away. Let
her brush it clean.
What she yearned was a thing more sure and real than world. Her eyes
went out from behind where she stood yearning, passed the world in a
flash. So small it was. Passed the stars that were dim above houses. The
black Nothing was All. The stirrings of suns were flecks upon glow of
black spaces.
She leaned there and yearned, and argued; she could not move.
She sobbed dryly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account