The next chapter in John Kinsella's exclusive autobiographical series. Paul Hamill Paul Hamill has been published widely in print journals including The Georgia Review, The Florida Review, and The Habersham Review. At the Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown, New York, the Cardiff Giant sleeps in a shed of barn planks. They heard the surf against the hills to which his kind retreated, the wives and children crying, the sheep and cattle bawling. They saw the giant's despair, for he drowned lying down.
Some folks meet their losses that way, as if enduring a beating without crying.
Something familiar too in his thick feet, so sure in the mud of the world's springtime. He must have shuffled and squelched like a man in galoshes, the way that city people claim all farmers walk. One sensitive clergyman was sure his mien was compassion. He did not pine for the brightness of mornings, nor for plowing in springtime, nor for bread nor beer, nor his own strength. He laid it out as plain as an old woman's proverb, death is a stone that draws our dreams and yet is dreamless.