The second typescript
[Page 13]
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| Looked at from this angle the problem of death and survival | ||
| Ages slightly. For the solutions are millionfold, like waves of wild geese returning in spring. | ||
| Scarcely we know where to turn to avoid suffering, I mean | ||
| There are so many places. |
| So, coachman-servile, or scullion-slatternly, but each place is taken. |
| The lines that draw nearer together are said to "vanish." | ||
| The point where they meet is their vanishing point. |
| Spaces, as they recede, appear to become smaller. |
| But another, more urgent question imposes itself--that of poverty. | ||
| How to excuse it to oneself? The wetness and coldness? Dirt and grime? | ||
| Uncomfortable, unsuitable lodgings, with a depressing view? | ||
| The peeled geranium flowering in a rusted tomato can, | ||
| Framed in a sickly ray of sunlight, a tragic chromo? |
| A broken mirror nailed up over a chipped enamel basin, whose turgid waters | ||
| Reflect the fly-specked calendar--with ecstatic Dutch girl clasping tulips-- | ||
| On the far wall. Hanging from one nail, an old velvet hat with a tattered bit of veiling--last remnant of former finery. | ||
| The bed well-made. The whole place scrupulously clean, but cold and damp. |
| All this, wedged into a pyramidal ray of light, is my own invention. |
| * * * |  |
| Under a reddish-brown and greenish picture of excited beagles and calm huntsmen | | |
| A mass[?] lot of squalling and retching arose from the messed-up crib. | | |
| The newborn offspring was given the name of Charles. | | |
| He grew up to become a successful business executive. | |
| But to return to our tomato can--those spared by the goats | ||
| Can be made into a practical telephone, the two halves being connected by a length of wire. | ||
| You can talk to your friend in the next room, or around corners. | ||
| An American inventor made a fortune with just such a contraption. |
| The branches tear at the sky-- |
| The blight is on inert space | | |
| Footage to dig under you so | | |
| Things too tiny to be remembered in recorded history--the backfiring of a bus | ||
| In a Paris street in 1932, and all the clumsy seductions and amateur paintings done | ||
| Clamber to join in the awakening (the levee with its chocolate) | | |
| To take a further role in my determination. These clown-shapes |
