Prince Lir said, As soon as I saw her, I knew that I had been dead. It was so the other time, when I looked down from my father s tower and saw her. Fish bent and flickered in the whisking streams, and wildflowers raced up and down the hills like escaped prisoners. Only the oldest among them had ever seen the spring before, and many suspected the rampaging greenness of being a plague or an invasion. It is very painful, he would warn me, to love someone and believe that you can never be with them.
Death refreshes memory, pushes away the clutter of years.
And perhaps it haunts you. The smile moved again, off her lips, into her face. Only the mind and the imagination could keep someone alive, as he had kept Amelita Galli-Curci s voice alive in the Catskills. There was a time you came to the Catskills because it was paradise. Do not be so afraid, he advised.