“SANS Espoir, sans Espoir . . .” sang the lady while the piano
laboriously opened its box of old sardines in treacle. One detected
ptomaine in the syrup.
Sans Espoir . . . I thought of the rhymes—soir, nonchaloir,
reposoir—the dying falls of a symbolism grown sadly suicidal before the
broad Flemish back of the singer, the dewlaps of her audience. Sans
Espoir. The listeners wore the frozen rapture of those who gaze upon the
uplifted Host.
Catching one another’s eye, we had a simultaneous vision of pews, of
hyenas and hysteria.
Three candles were burning. They behaved like English aristocrats in a
French novel—perfectly, impassively. I tried to imitate their
milordliness.
One of the candles flickered, snickered. Was it a draught or was it
laughter?
Flickering, snickering—candles, you betrayed me. I had to laugh too.
BEAUTY
I
THERE is a sea somewhere—whether in the lampless crypts of the earth,
or among sunlit islands, or that which is an unfathomable and terrifying
question between the archipelagos of stars—there is a sea (and perhaps
its tides have filled those green transparent pools that glint like eyes
in a spring storm-cloud) which is for ever troubled and in travail—a
bubbling and a heaving up of waters as though for the birth of a
fountain.
The sick and the crippled lie along the brims in expectation of the
miracle. And at last, at last . . .
A funnel of white water is twisted up and so stands, straight and still
by the very speed of its motion.
It drinks the light; slowly it is infused with colour, rose and
mother-of-pearl. Slowly it takes shape, a heavenly body.
O dazzling Anadyomene!
The flakes of foam break into white birds about her head, fall again in
a soft avalanche of flowers. Perpetual miracle, beauty endlessly born.