Page 22 - Contrast1960v4n1

phalanx of colors, like giants showing off the esthetic gifts the Creator
had lavished upon them. The stream sang happily, .a carefree melody,
as it dammed and swirled across the field and out of sight. The grass
crackled and crunched underfoot, and the uppity horse turned her
nose and refused to eat such dried stuff. Sitting in the middle of the
field you could watch the bees and the ants as they cheerily went about
the work that only they knew so well; the squirrels, rabbits, hedgehogs
and occasionally some pheasants marched stoicly but silently on their
ways. The field seemed to flow into you there. It seemed to live and
breathe, saying to you: "I am the field. I will never change." And
overhead the blazing sky seemed to smile an echo.

Even in winter the field seemed not to change, although the
leaves died and fell to the ground, grotesque and terribly withered
things; and the grass was sparse in places. T e snows came and
smothered all except the giant naked limbs of th\ oak trees, which
reached toward the sky like giant skeletons reachirs upward toward
the light and their life source. The stream froze over and its song of
laughter was replaced by the passive shout of the ng mournful
north wind. Ah! But it was still the field. The trees leal ~d over and
seemed to be saying: "See! See! It is we. We haven't changed." And
the stream beneath its ceiling of ice would promise ''I'm still here.
Nothing has changed." And true to its word, each part of the field
would return just as it had been-just as I thought it would always be.

Years passed; times changed. Fate takes the wind and bends it, so
that no ship can sail straight forever. An army of friends had come
and gone-stepping into life, making their marks, and stepping back
Out again. The dogs had died. The horse and the cattle had passed
now. Nothing is permanent; change dominates a world hating change.
But the field stayed the same. Some years its face was a dark brown
of plowed furrows; sometimes it was a mass of awkward tall green
giants of corn, which mel ted in the fall into shocks of browning fodder,
and spots of the yellow gold of ears. Yet it was still the same field-
only its appearance had changed. Even tragedy and pain, sorrow and
despair came. And like the armies, they, too, passed on. The field
had no heart, no body, no mind, no will. It would be the same-

until. ...
I returned to the field one day long after the armies, sorrows

and despair had passed. I returned to the one thing which could not
change. The trees were gone. The two hills were gone. In place of
one there was a squat, ugly house. Where the other had been there
now was a road. The grass had long since been strangled and killed

15