They are all plotting sadness. They are dealing out illness, heartache, and death like a deck of cards. They crackle and spark in the incendiary light of the stove fire. If we could watch them we would see the lives fold inward on themselves like blossoms in frost. There could be no mercy.
Deliverance happens down the street, around the next corner, beyond the bend in the river.
Every village is exactly the same. In the house mext door greed has killed a soul, and notice how ambition festers and smells. If we could stop, if we could live each life over and over like the ringing of the bell calling the faithful to listen, to listen, to the voice no one hears but himself. John Mann San Antonio San Antonio is the old woman with cataracts they put on the small hills of the mattress on the back porch. She listens to the banana leaves brushing the screens.