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Night Operations III.

"Fragment

This I remember clearly: from stone to stepping-stone
I bore you in my arms across the quiet stream. . . .
And yet I know not where nor when; nor whether in dream
It was, or in some former land, or land foreknown.

Willows there were, and leaves and flowers of arrowhead,
And the tall reeds that lifted up their bronzy maces. . . .
Yet in what place among the long-forgotten places?
Or in what untold year, or year of ages sped?

What chanceful magic brings this moment back to me,
Or calls it from the murk and mist of worlds unborn?—
A burst of sun on Lethe boundless and forlorn,
A narrow circle of noon where else is mystery.

This I remember only, belovèd, that it was you
I held with tender care and loving arms that yearned:
Your breasts were light upon my heart; your tresses burned
Between the nameless heavens and nameless waters blue."

--Clark Ashton Smith

Sunset from the Propylaea of the Acropolis.

"All day, all night the body intervenes; blunts or sharpens, colours or discolours, turns to wax in the warmth of June, hardens to tallow in the murk of February. The creature within can only gaze through the pane—smudged or rosy; it cannot separate off from the body like the sheath of a knife or the pod of a pea for a single instant; it must go through the whole unending procession of changes, heat and cold, comfort and discomfort, hunger and satisfaction, health and illness, until there comes the inevitable catastrophe; the body smashes itself to smithereens, and the soul (it is said) escapes." --Virginia Woolf

Creation of the Birds.