THE mind has lost its Aristotelian elegance of shape: there is only a
darkness where bubbles and inconsequent balloons float up to burst their
luminous cheeks and vanish.
A woman with a basket on her head: a Chinese lantern quite askew: the
vague bright bulging of chemists’ window bottles; and then in my ears
the distant noise of a great river of people. And phrases, phrases—
It is only a question of saddle-bags,
Stane Street and Gondibert,
Foals in Iceland (or was it Foals in aspic?).
As that small reddish devil turns away with an insolent jut of his
hindquarters, I become aware that his curling pug’s tail is an electric
bell-push. But that does not disquiet me so much as the sight of all
these polished statues twinkling with high lights and all of them
grotesque and all of them colossal.