Page 38 - Contrast1964Spring
P. 38
Even the pain faded and the darkness was coffin in the earth and the whispering over.
thick again. Memory was as strangely quiet The men and women eager to gather to con-
as-the silent face he saw. He got up and did demn left him alone at last.
what was expected but something hadshat-
cered forever and the gleaming splinters con- It was over and he was a1one, and not01 ovcere
fused him.
and he was not alone .. He h ear d ndew Sl enbut
Others came. -The men shook their heads rushing in; the con fUSl0 On move away
and the women in black wept with cat eyes.
They murmured and the sound grew loud in his there was no calm.
head; he saw too many faces and only one.
There was no quiet, he could not find any He went to the land that had never fal0o1 ed
quiet, and the sharp-eyed women were every- him and walked the land, searc hilng, but liikvee
where. They pressed him in and he feltsmoth-
ered, as though all the rooms were airless and him the land was too h ar,d t 00 strong to game
he was suffocating. The men were stiff with 0
solumness, faces miming his grief unconsci- 0
ously. Then it was done somehow, the dark
an answer. As he walked the hIlls hIt c yes
again and again--the c h1ild oS face .e teOe ust the
seeking hi s. There was nothing mo r ,J d ty
face and the low wind movin° g aero 5S the US .
late-summer land.
J an Shell
36
