Taib Saleh

The Doum-tree of Wad Hamid

W
ERE YOU aO COME to our village
as a tourist, it is likely, my son, that
you would not stay long. If it were in winter-
time, when the palm-trees are pollinated, you
would find that a dark cloud had descended
over the village. This, my son, would not be
dust, nor yet that mist which rises up after
rainfall. It would be a swarm of those sand-
flies which block all approaches to those
wishing to enter our village. You may well
have seen this pest before, but I swear that
you have never seen this particular species.
Take this gauze netting, my son, and put it
over your head. While it wont protect you
against these devils, it will at least be of some
help. I remember a friend of my sons, a
fellow-student of his at school. A year ago,
at just this time, my son invited him to stay
with us, his people being from the town. He
stayed one night and got up next day in a
fever, with a running nose and swollen face,
and swore that he wouldnt spend another
night with us.
If you were to come to us in summer you
would find horse-flies--enormous flies the
size of spring lambs, as we say. In com-
parison, these sand-flies are a thousand times
more bearable: they are savage flies, my son,
they bite, sting, buzz and whirr. They have
a special love for man and no sooner smell
him out than they attach themselves to him.
Wave them off you, my son--God curse
all sand-flies.
This story is by a young Sudanese writer and
is translated [rom the Arabic by Denys
Johnson-Davies.
15
And were you to come at a time which was
neither summer nor winter you would find
nothing at all. No doubt, my son, you read
the papers daily, listen to the radio, and go to
the cinema once or twice a week. Should you
become ill you have the right to be treated
in hospital, and if you have a son he is en-
tided to receive a school education. I know,
my son, that you hate dark streets and like to
see electric light shining out in the night. I
know, too, that you are not enamoured of
walking and that riding donkeys gives you a
bruise on your backside. Oh, I wish, my son,
I wish.., the asphalted roads of the towns
.. modern means of transport.., fine, com-
fortable buses.., we have none of these
things. We are people who live on what God
sees fit to give us.
To-morrow you will depart from our vil-
lage, of this I am sure, and you will be right
to do so. What have you to do with such
hardship? We are thick-skinned people and
in this we differ from others. We have
become used to this rough life, in fact we
like it, but we ask no one to suffer its hard-
ships. To-morrow you will depart, my son,
I know that. Before you leave, though, let
me show you one thing--something which,
in a manner of speaking, we are proud of.
In the towns you have museums, places in
which local history and the great deeds of the
past are preserved. This thing that I want to
show you can be said to be a museum. It is
the one thing which we insist that our visitors
should see.
ONCE A PREACHER, sent by the government,
came to stay with us for a month He
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16 Taib Saleh
arrived at a time when the horse-flies had
never been fatter. On the very first day the
mans face swelled up. He bore this manfully
and joined us in evening prayers on the
second night, and after prayers he talked to
us of the delights of the primitive life. On
the third day he was down with malaria, had
contracted dysentery, and his eyes were com-
pletely bunged up. At noon I visited him
and found him prostrate in bed with a boy
standing at his head waving away the flies.
"O Sheikh," I said to him, "there is
nothing in our village to show you, though
I would like you to see the doum-tree of
Wad Harold." He didnt ask me what Wad
Hamids doum-tree was; I presumed,
though, that he had heard of it, for who has
not done so? He raised his face which was
like the lung of a slaughtered cow; his eyes
--as I mentioned--were firmly closed though
I knew that behind the lashes there lurked
a certain bitterness.
"By God," he said to me, "were this the
doum-tree of Jandal, and were you the
Moslems who fought with All and Muawiya,
and were I the arbitrator between you, hold-
ing your fate in these two hands of mine,
I wouldnt stir an inch," and he spat upon
the ground as though to curse me and
turned away his face. After that we heard
that the Sheikh had cabled to those who had
sent him saying: "The horse-flies have eaten
into my neck, malaria has burnt up my skin,
and dysentery has lodged itself in my bowels.
Come to my rescue, may God bless you.
These are people who are in no need of me
or of any other preacher." And so the man
departed and the government sent us no
preacher after him.
But, my son, our village actually wit-
nessed many great men of power and in-
fluence, people with names that rang
through the country like drums, whom we
never even dreamed would ever come here--
they came, by God, in droves.
We have arrived. Have patience, my son,
in a little while there will be the noonday
breeze to lighten the agony of this pest upon
your face.
Here it is--the doum-tree of Wad Harold.
Look how it holds its head aloft to the skies;
look how its roots strike down into the earth;
look at its full, sturdy trunk, like the form of
a comely woman, at the branches on high
resembling the mane o a frolicsome steed!
In the afternoon, at the incline of the sun,
the doum-tree casts its shadow from thi~ high
mound right across the river so that someone
sitting on the far bank can rest in its shade.
At morning, when the sun rises, the shadow
cf the tree stretches across the cultivated land
and houses right up to the cemetery. Do you
r.ot find that it is like some mythical eagle
spreading its wings over the village and
everyone in it? Once the government, want-
ing to put through an agricultural scheme,
decided to cut it down: they said that the
best place for setting up the pump was where
the doum-tree stood. As you can see, the
people of our village are solely concerned
with their everyday needs and I cannot re.
member their ever having rebelled against
anything. However, when they heard about
cutting down the doum-tree they all rose up
as one man and barred the district commis-
sioners way. This was in the time of foreign
rule. The flies assisted them too--the horse-
flies. The man was surrounded by the
clamouring people shouting that if the doum-
tree were cut down they would fight the
government to the last man, while the flies
played havoc with the mans face. As his
papers were scattered in the water we heard
him cry out: "All right...doum-tree stay
... scheme no stay." And so neither the
pump nor the scheme came about and we
kept our doum-tree.
Let us go home, my son, for this is no time
for talking in the open. This hour just before
sunset is a time when the army of sand-flies
becomes particularly active prior to going to
sleep. At such a time no one who isnt well-
accustomed to them and has become as thick-
sHnned as us can bear their stings. Look at
it, my son, look at the doum-tree: lofty,
p::oud, and haughty as though.., as though
it were some ancient idol. Wherever you
happen to be in the village you can see it...
in fact, you can see it even from four villages
away.
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The Doum.tree of Wad Hamid
To-morrow you will depart from our vil-
lage, of that there is no doubt, the mementos
of the short walk we have taken visible upon
your face, neck, and hands. However, before
you leave I shall complete the story of the
tree, the doum-tree of Wad Hamid. Enter,
my son, treat this house as your own.
y
o u ^ s x who planted the doum-tree ?
No one planted it, my son. Is the
ground in which it grows arable land? Do
you not see that it is stony and appreciably
higher than the river bank, like the pedestal
of a statue, while the river twists and turns
below it like a sacred snake, one of the
ancient gods of the Egyptians? My son, no
one planted it. Drink your tea, my son, for
you must be in need of it after the severe ex-
perience you have undergone .... Most prob-
ably it grew up by itself, though no one
remembers having known it other than as
you now find it. Our sons opened their eyes
to find it commanding the village. And we,
when we take ourselves back to childhood
memories, to that dividing line beyond which
we remember nothing, see in our minds a
giant doum-tree standing on a river bank;
everything beyond it is like that faded light
which is not dawn but the light directly pre-
ceding the break of dawn. My son, do you
find that you can follow what I say? Are
you aware of this feeling I have in my mind
but which I am powerless to express? Every
new generation finds the doum-tree as
though the tree had been born with their
birth and would grow up with them. Go
and sit with the people of this village and
listen to them recounting their dreams. A
man awakens from sleep and tells his neigh-
bour how he found himself in a vast sandy
track, the sand as white as pure silver, of
how his feet sank in as he walked so that
only with difficulty could he draw them out
again, of how he walked and walked until
he was overcome with thirst and stricken
with hunger, while the sands stretched end-
lessly around him; of how he climbed a hill
and on reaching its peak espied a dense
forest of doum-trees in the midst of which
was one single tall tree which in comparison
2
17
with the others looked like a camel among a
flock of goats; of how the man descended the
hill to find that the earth seemed to be rolled
up before him so that it was but a step, a
second and a third before he found himself
under the doum-tree of WadHamid; of how
he then discovered a vessel containing milk,
its surface still fresh with froth, and of how,
though he drank until he was quenched, the
milk was in no wise lessened. At which his
neighbour says to him: "Rejoice at release
from your troubles."
You can also hear women saying to their
friends: "It was as though I were in a boat
sailing through a channel in the sea, so
narrow that I could stretch out my hands
and touch the shore on either side. I found
myself on the crest of a mountainous wave
which carried me upwards till I was almost
touching the clouds then bore me down into
a dark, fathomless pit. I began shouting in
my fear, but it was as though my voice were
trapped in my throat. Suddenly I found the
channel opening out a little. I saw that on
the two shores were black, leafless trees with
thorns, the tips of which were like the heads
of hawks. I saw the two shores closing in
upon me and the trees seemed to be walking
towards me. I was filled with terror and
called out at the top of my voice: "O Wad
Hamid!" As I looked I saw a man with
radiant face and heavy white beard flowing
down over his chest, dressed in spotless
white and holding a string of amber prayer-
beads. Placing his hand on my brow he said:
"Be not afraid," and I was calmed. Then I
found the shore opening up and the water
flowing gently. I looked to my left and saw
fields of ripe corn, water-wheels turning, and
cattle grazing, and on the shore stood the
doum-tree of Wad Hamid. The boat came
to rest under the tree and the man stepped
out before me, tied up the boat, and stretched
out his hand to me. He then struck me gently
on the shoulder with the string of beads and
taking up a doum-fruit from the ground he
placed it in my hand. When I turned round
he was no longer there." Her friend then
says to her: "That was Wad Hamid .... You
will have an illness that will bring you to
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18
the brink of death but you will recover from
it. You must make an offering to Wad
Hamid, under the doum-tree."
So it is, my son, that there is not a man
or woman, young or old, who dreams at
night without seeing the doum-tree of Wad
Hamid at some point in his dream.
You ask me why it was called the doum-
tree of Wad Hamid and who Wad Hamid
was. Be patient, my son.., have another cup
of tea.
At the beginning of home rule an em-
ployee in the government came to inform us
that the government was intending to set up
a stopping-place for the steamer. He told us
that the national government wished to help
us and to see us progress, and his face was
radiant with enthusiasm as he talked. He
saw, however, that the faces around him ex-
pressed no reaction. My son, we are not
people who travel very much and when we
wish to do so for some important matter such
as registering land or seeking advice about
a matter of divorce, we take a mornings ride
on our donkeys and then board the steamer
from the neighbouring village. My son, we
have grown accustomed to this, in fact it is
for precisely this reason that we breed
donkeys. It is litde wonder, then, that the
government official discerned nothing in the
peoples faces to indicate that they were
pleased with the news. The government
officials enthusiasm waned and, being at his
wits end, he began fumbling for words.
After a period of silence someone asked him:
"Where will the stopping-place be?" To
which the official replied that there was only
one suitable place--where the doum-tree
stood. Had you that instant brought along
a woman and had her stand amidst those
men as naked as the day her mother bore her,
their amazement would have been no greater
than that occasioned by this phrase. One of
the men hastily replied to the official: "The
steamer usually passes here on a Wednesday.
If you made a stopping-place, then it would
be here on Wednesday afternoon." The
official replied that the time fixed for the
steamer to stop over at their village would
be four oclock on Wednesday afternoon.
Taib Saleh
"But that," answered the man, "is the time
when we visit the tomb of Wad Hamid at
the doum-tree, when we take our women
an.d children and make offerings. We do this
every week." The official replied laughingly:
":[hen change the day." Had the official
told these men at that moment that every one
of them was a bastard, they would not have
been more angered than by this remark of
his. They rose up as one man, bore down
upon him, and would certainly have killed
him had I not intervened and snatched him
from their clutches. I then put him on a
donkey and told him to make good his
escape. And so it was that the steamer still
does not stop here and that we still, when
circumstances require us to travel, ride off
on our donkeys for a whole morning and
take the steamer from the neighbouring vil-
lage. We content ourselves with the thought
that we visit the tomb of Wad Hamid with
our women and children and that, as our
fathers and fathers fathers did before us,
we make offerings there every Wednesday.
Excuse ME, my son, while I perform the
sunset prayer.., it is said that the sunset
prayer is "strange": if you dont catch it in
time it eludes you .... "Gods pious servants
... I declare that there is no God but God
and I declare that Mohammed is His Servant
and His Prophet ....
Peace be upon you and
the mercy of God."
Ah, ah. For a week this back of mines
been paining me. What do you think it is,
my son? I know, though, its just old age ....
O for youth! ... In my young days I would
breakfast off half a sheep, drink the milk of
five cows for supper, and be able to lift a
sack of dates with one hand. He lies who
says he ever beat me at wrestling. They used
to call me "the crocodile." Once I swam the
river using my chest to push a boat loaded
with wheat to the other shore.., at night!
On the shore were some men at work at
their water-wheels, who, when they saw me
pushing the boat towards them, threw down
their clothes in terror and fled. "O people,"
]! shouted at them, "whats wrong, shame
upon you! Dont you know me? Im the
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The Doum-tree of Wad Hamid 19
crocodile. My God, the devils themselves mouth. I saw a venerable old man with a
would be scared off by your ugly faces."
M
Y soN, have you asked me what we
do when were ill?
I laugh because I know whats going on
in your head .... You townsfolk hurry to the
hospital at the slightest pretext. If one of you
hurts his finger he dashes off to the doctor
who puts it into a bandage for him and he
carries it in a sling for days; and even then it
doesnt get better. Once I was working in the
fields and something bit my finger--this
little finger of mine. I jumped to my feet
and looked around in the grass where I
found a snake lurking. I swear to you it was
longer than my arm. I took hold of it by
the head and crushed it between my two
fingers, then bit into my finger, sucked out
the blood, and took up a handful of dust and
rubbed it over.
But this is a small matter. What do we do
when faced with real illness?
This neighbour of ours, now .... One day
her neck swelled up and she was confined to
bed for two months. During the night she
had a heavy fever so at first dawn she rose
from her bed and dragged herself along till
she came.., yes, my son, till she came to
the doum-tree of Wad Hamid. The woman
related what happened. "I was under the
doum-tree," she said, "with hardly sufficient
strength to stand up, and called out at the
top of my voice: O Wad Hamid, I have
come to you to seek refuge and protec-
tion .... I shall sleep here at your tomb and
under your doum-tree. Either you let me die
or you restore me to life; I shall not leave
here until one of these two things happens.
And so I curled myself up in fear," con-
tinued the woman in her story, "and was
soon overcome by sleep. While midway
between wakefulness and sleep I suddenly
heard sounds of recitation from the Koran
and a bright light, as sharp as a knife-edge,
radiated out, joining up the two river banks,
and I saw the doum-tree prostrating itself in
worship. My heart throbbed so violently that
I thought it would leap up through my
white beard and wearing a spotless white
robe approaching me, a smile on his face.
He struck me on the head with his string of
prayer-beads and called out: Arise. I swear
that I rose up not knowing how I had done
so and came home I know not how. I arrived
back at dawn and woke up my husband, my
son and daughters. I told my husband to
light the fire and make tea, then ordered my
daughters to utter shrill ululations of joy,
and the whole village descended upon us.
I swear that I was never again afraid, nor
yet ill."
Yes, my son, we are a people who have
no experience of hospitals. In small matters
such as the bites of scorpions, fever, sprains,
and fractures, we take to our beds until we
are cured. When in serious trouble we go to
the doum-tree.
S
H A L L I T E L L yOU the story of Wad
Hamid, my son, or would you like to
sleep? Town folk dont go to sleep till late
at night--I know that of them. We, though,
go to sleep directly the birds are silent, the
flies stop harrying the cattle, the leaves of
the trees settle down, the hens spread their
wings over their chicks and the goats turn
on their sides to chew the cud of the fodder
collected during the day. We and our
animals are alike, we rise in the morning
when they rise and go to sleep when they
sleep, our breathing and theirs following one
and the same preconceived design.
My father, reporting what my grandfather
had told him, said: "Wad Hamid in former
times was the slave of a wicked man. He was
one of Gods holy saints but kept his faith
to himself, not daring to pray openly lest his
wicked master should kill him. When he
could no longer bear his life with this infidel
he called upon God to deliver him and a
voice called out to him to spread his prayer-
carpet on the water and that when it stopped
by the shore he should descend. The prayer-
carpet put him down at the spot where the
doum-tree is now and which used to be waste
land. And there he stayed alone, praying the
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20 Taib Saleh
whole day. At nightfall a man came to him
with dishes of food, so he ate and continued
his worship till the break of dawn. All. this
took place before the village was built up.
It is as though this village, with its in-
habitants, its water-wheels and buildings, had
become split off from the earth. Anyone who
tells you he knows the history of its origin
is a liar. Other places begin small and then
grow larger, but this village of ours sprang
up at one bound. Its population neither
increases nor decreases, while its appearance
remains unchanged. And ever since our vil-
lage existed so has the doum-tree of Wad
Hamid; and in the same way no one remem-
bers how it originated, how the doum-tree
came to grow in a patch of rocky ground by
the river, standing above it like a sentinel.
When I took you to visit it, do you remem-
ber, my son, the iron railing round it? Do
you remember the marble plaque standing on
a stone pedestal with The doum-tree o] Wad
Hamid written on it? Do you remember the
doum-tree with the gilded crescents above the
tomb? They are the only new things about
the village since God first planted it here, and
the story of all this I shall now recount to
you.
When you travel away to-morrow--and
you will certainly do so, swollen of face and
inflamed of eye---it will be fitting if you do
not curse it but, rather, think boldly of us
and of the things that I have told you this
night, for you may well find that your visit
to us was not wholly bad.
y
ou REM~-MBr-~ that some years ago
we had members of Parliament and
political parties and a great deal of to-ing and
fro-ing which we couldnt make head or tail
of. The roads would sometimes cast down
strangers at our very doors just as the waves
of the sea wash up strange weeds. Though
not a single one of them prolonged his stay
beyond one night, they would nevertheless
bring us the news of the great fuss going on
in the capital. One day they told us that the
government which had driven out imperial-
ism had been substituted by another govern-
ment possessed of even more members and
cZ.amour. "And who has changed it?" we
asked of them, but received no answer. As
for us, ever since we refused to allow the
stopping-place to be set up at the doum-tree
no one had disturbed our tranquil existence.
Two years passed without our knowing what
fl~rm the government had taken, black or
white. Its emissaries passed through our
village without staying in it, while we
thanked God that He had saved us the
trouble of putting them up. So things went
on till, four years ago, a new government
replaced the first one. As though this new
authority wished to make us conscious of its
presence, we awoke one day to find an
official with an enormous hat and small head,
in the company of two soldiers, measuring
up and doing calculations at the doum-tree.
We asked them what it was about, to which
they replied that the government wished to
build a stopping-place for the steamer under
the doum-tree.
"But we have already given you our
answer about that," we told them. "What
makes you think well accept it now?"
"The government," they said, "which
gave in to you was a weak one, but the posi-
tion has now changed."
To cut a long story short, we took them
by the scruffs of their necks, hurled them
into the water, then went off to our work.
It wasnt more than a week later when a
posse of troops came along commanded by
the small-headed official with the large hat,
who called out to them: "Arrest that man,
and that one, and that one," until theyd
taken off twenty of us, I among them. We
spent a month in prison, then one day the
very soldiers who had put us there opened
the prison gates. We asked them what it was
all about but no one said anything. Outside
the prison we found a great gathering of
people; no sooner were we spotted than there
were shouts and cheering and we were em-
braced by some cleanly-dressed people,
heavily scented and with gold watches gleam-
ing on their wrists. They carried us off in
a great procession, back to our own folk.
There we found an unbelievably immense
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The Doum-tree
crowd of people, carts, horses, and camels.
We said to each other: "The din and flurry
of the capital has caught up with us." They
made us twenty men stand in a row and the
people passed along it shaking us by the
hand: The Prime Minister... the President
of the Parliament... the President of the
Senate... the member for such and such
constituency.., the member for such and
such other constituency. We looked at each
other without understanding a thing of what
was going on around us except that our
arms were aching with all the handclasps
we had been receiving from those presidents
and members of Parliament. They then took
us off in a great concourse to the place where
the doum-tree and the tomb stand. The
Prime Minister laid the foundation stone for
the monument youve seen, and for the dome
youve seen, and for the railing youve seen.
In the same manner as a tornado blows up
for a while then departs, so that mighty host
disappeared as suddenly as it had come
without spending a night in the village--no
doubt because of the horse-flies which, that
particular year, were as large and fat and
buzzed and whirred as much as during the
year the preacher came to us.
One of those strangers who were cast upon
us in the village by the highways, and by-
ways later told us the story of all this fuss.
and bother.
"The people," he said, "hadnt been happy
about this government since it came to power,
for they knew that it had only come in by
buying a numbdr of the members of Parlia-
ment. They therefore bided their time and
waited for the right opportunities to present
themselves, while the opposition looked
around for something to spark things off.
When the doum-tree incident occurred and
they took you all off and slung you into
prison, the newspapers published the news
and the leader of the government which had
resigned made a fiery speech in Parliament in
which he said: To such tyranny has this
government come that it has begun to inter-
fere in the bdliefs of the people, in those holy
things held most sacred by them. Then,
taking a most imposing stance and in a voice
of Wad Hamid 21
choked with emotion, he said: Ask our
worthy Prime Minister about the doum-tree
of Wad Hamid! Ask him how it was that
he permitted himself to send his troops and
henchmen to desecrate that pure and holy
place !
"The people took up the cry and through-
out the country their hearts responded to the
incident of the doum-tree as to nothing
before. Perhaps the reason is that in every
village in this country there is some monu-
ment like the doum-tree of Wad Hamid
which people see in their dreams. After a
month of fuss and shouting and inflamed
feelings, fifty members of the government
were forced to withdraw their support, their
constituencies having warned them that un-
less they did so they would wash their hands
of them. And so the government fell, the
first government returned to power and the
leading paper in the country wrote: The
doum-tree of Wad Hamid has become the
symbol of the nations awakening...."
Since that day we have been unaware of
the existence of the new government and not
one of those great giants of. men who visited
us has put in an appearance, and we thanked
God that He spared us the trouble of having
to shake them by the hand. Our life returned
to what it had been: no water-pump, no
agricultural proiect, no stopping-place for
the steamer. Yet we retained our doum-tree
which casts its shadow over the southern
bank in the afternoon and which, in the
morning, spreads its shadow over the fields
and houses right up to the cemetery, with the
river flowing below it like some sacred snake
of legend. Our village has, however,
acquired a marble monument, an iron rail-
ing, and a dome with gilded crescents.
W
n ~ N the man had finished what he
had to say he looked at me with an
enigmatic smile playing at the corners of his
mouth like the faint flickerings of a lamp.
"And when," I asked, "will they set up
the water-pump and put through the agri-
cultural project and the stopping-place for
the steamer?"
He lowered his head for a short while
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22
Taib Sageh
before answering me: "When people go to
sleep and dont see the doum-tree in their
dreams."
"And when will that be?" I said, to which
he replied: "I mentioned to you that my son
is in the town studying at school. It wasnt
I who put him there; he ran away and went
there on his own, and it is my hope that he
will stay where he is and not return. When
my sons son passes out of school and the
number of young men with souls foreign to
our own increases, then perhaps the water-
pump will be set up and the agricultural
project put into being.., maybe then the
steamer will stop at our village.., under the
doum-tree of Wad Hamid."
"And do you think," I said to him, "that
the doum-tree will one day be cut down?"
He looked at me for a long while as though
wishing to project, through his tired, misty
eyes, something which he was incapable of
doing by word. "There will not be the least
necessity for cutting down the doum-tree.
There is not the slightest reason for the tomb
to be removed. What all these people have
overlooked is that theres plenty of room for
all these things: plenty of room for the doum-
tree, the tomb, the water-pump, and the
steamers stopping-place."
When he had been silent for a time he
gave me a look which I dont know how to
describe though it stirred within me a feel-
ing of sadness, sadness for some obscure
thing which I was unable to define. Then
he said: "To-morrow you will without
doubt be leaving us. When you arrive at
your destination, think well of us and judge
us not too harshly."
April and the Ideas-Merchant
] was plying my trade in the street,
It was a rainy agate twilight
And my eyes were half lid.., but my towrt-bred soul
Was tempted a_r~d within an inch of giving in.
I was at work upon a suburb o:? my brain,
An ultra-treacherous idea was in its private room there
And I was closing in---~th the ink streaming off my brow/
But my soul attentive to the a{~te oxygen.
Crates of glass and water had been dumped down by the weather,
Overhead a last skylight open~t in the Koh-i-noor,
---A whole civilisation was loose, bully and vixen
Moving along, roasting hot, ready for anythingl
And---odium I was in the chien-loup
Of the Latin Quarter of my brain
~here certain dark yellow hours go by
. . that lead off surreptitiously into eternity.
Academicl Hackl Vulgarianl
You mistook the nature of your calling. Poets are only at work,
With an agate daylight going ~hrough the street,
When they live, dream, bleed---within an inch of giving in to art.
Rosemary Tonks
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