The Avignon Quintet (36 page)

What does it matter? Every wish contains some grain of death. The mind has an idler switch, an automatic pilot. That is where the pretty inventions come from.

Talking of collective nouns with Toby, pride of lions, flock of sheep, etc., he suggested an “amazement “of women.

In the midst of life we are encircled by the great sea of death about which we know nothing. For the sage silence is a fuel; it whistles through the rigging of the nerves like a Force 8 gale. Time has it in for us, and we for time. I was aware of this all the time, with every single kiss. At Innsbruck the
f
ö
hn
was blowing enough to drive one mad. The old novelist confided his manuscript to a traveller in Malta who on arrival in Marseille was found to be suffering from the plague. They burnt all his belongings, and that is how the work disappeared. (Coleridge.)

Sylvie says that the word “love” is a blank domino. She is right. I am swallowing my pride.
Àme sœur
,
âne sûr
.

When loneliness goes gaunt, Pia, nourished on long absences, honey …

Régine had the air of a rather vulgar duchess playing a part. Had she been a real duchess like old Tu she would perhaps have been even more vulgar but much more natural.

Cloudy white wine of Aramon with a bluish meniscus hinting of ethyl.

Swollen tongue, cloudy urine, enuresis, spatula … Ugh! Dying of an obscure kidney condition. The old defeated priest. I felt sorry to be so anti Christian when I saw him so nobly suffering.

Je souffre chérie, donc je suis bien portant, c’est à dire presque humain.

Je suis ni un refoulé

Ni un cérébral

Mais un vieu Epicurean

Un peu ogival
.

Printer’s ink from a proof gave him Scotland Yard hands. Ink lingering malingering.

The blood chirps and twitters, it is dateless;

Our ancestors send their dead tap-roots through us.

Her toes printed in baby powder

On a bathroom floor in Orta. Clean and pink as pigeons’ toes.

Outside the window a catspaw of wind on the dark sifted lake.

One sail throbbing, trying to break loose.

On the balcony beauty takes you by the throat. Yield!

Munch the black flesh, Rob,

Thou gnostic stained with camel juice

As a woman she seemed to me

une cherchesolitude

une souffredouleur

une fauchepistolet

une polycombinable.