a something of leaves, a something of shadow
So trees produced oxygen in the form of words. ₁
he drew a few lines to indicate the streets and it looked like the branch of a tree with names standing out on the twigs. ₂ a forest of interesting, nitpicking names ₁
when one considers the picture more closely that a something of incoherent and flimsy obtrudes. The roads run nowhither ₃
and the words give out their scent, and ripple like leaves, and chequer us with light and shadow ₄
a something of shadow, Es un algo de sombra ₅
scarcely clear enough to be called ideas. They had something to do with fragrance and colour and sound, but almost nothing to do with words ₆
the darkest leaf of her whole life-tree, the senses’ darkest leaf, least understood, least accounted for ₂
tears flow from the uselessness of words ₁
—
sources
1 three leaves, from Murray Bail, Eucalyptus (1998) 2 Anne Ryan. “The Darkest Leaf.” Botteghe Oscure 22 (1958) : 272-306 / paragraph 34 : more 3 William D. McKay on the painter J. C. Wintour, in his The Scottish School of Painting (London, 1906) : 311 / more 4 Virginia Woolf, “On Being Ill,” in The Criterion, vol. 4 (January 1926) : 32-45 hathitrust : link 5 ex Julia de Burgos, “Es un algo de sombra,” (It is a something of shadow), in Song of the Simple Truth : obra completa poética : the complete poems. Compiled and translated by Jack Agueros (Curbstone Press, 1996) : 172-175 more 6 Willa Sibert Cather, The Song of the Lark (1915) : 299-300 Harvard copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
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