'Short distances and definite places'

What is this dark and silent caravan
that being nowhere, neither comes nor goes;
that being never, has no hour or span;
of which we can say only that it flows?
How was it that this empty datastream,
this cache of dead light could so lose its way
it wandered back to feed on its own dream?
How did that dream grow to the waking day?
What is the sound that fades up from the hiss,
like a glass some random downdraught had set ringing,
now full of its only note, its lonely call,
drawing on its song to keep it singing?
---D.P.

Those Chinese labourers working on the railroads, like they'd be hitting the thing...but looking away too, and noticing, say, a crow flying overhead...the Oriental mind going off on a different track.

'Over and over the crow cries uncover the cornfield' has the ring of a Chinese proverb adapted to the American landscape.

---Brian Wilson.

~~~

The croupiers' fatigue humanized them; they rubbed their eyes and stretched their legs and their agile hands went limp. Abby was a little dashed and melancholy, let down and drained; she was, even though she had won, inconsolable because now the table, stripped of its seductions, was only a table. And the croupiers were only exhausted workingmen going  home to bed.

---Jean Safford.

~~~

What is it to be a human being but to remember and imagine this gentle return to the ordinary life of square gardens and warm dinners, the reflected winter lights glowing mysteriously on the long eastern windows against darkness's depths? The quiet life that carries on under the radar, unbeknown; the interior life: nothing special, except for the fact that it is not registered on the surface; or it is, in your gait, the distant look in your eyes, the loss of swagger, panache, but all of that is only witnessed by other people.

Your face against the window pane, the hundreds of cars silently dashing by, the travelers with their lonely radio songs and memories of bright, carefree summer days.

You, you who have traveled much but are still the same. It is as if you have never left your room, have lived all your life gazing out. This interior castle in the driest desert. There is a tree there, somewhere. Or you imagine it. You think of home. A dark bird opens its thick wings and takes flight, disappears right out of the picture, carried by silver and star and reflection.