and coming home, there is a remarkable thing I find. So
up then in the grey of dawn, very weak and shaky after an
atrocious night little dreaming what lay in store, out and
off. What time of year, l really do not know, does it matter.
Not wet really, but dripping, everything dripping, the day
might rise, did it, no, drip drip all day long, no sun, no
change of light, dim all day, and still, not a breath, till
night, then black, and a little wind, I saw some stars, as I
neared home. My stick of course, by a merciful providence,
45
I shall not say this again, when not mentioned my stick is
in my hand, as I go along. But not my long coat, just my
jacket, I could never bear the long coat, flapping about my
legs, or rather one day suddenly I turned against it, a
sudden violent dislike. Often when dressed to go I would
take it out and put it on, then stand in the middle of the
room unable to move, until at last I could take it off and
put it back on its hanger, in the cupboard. But I was hardly
down the stairs and out into the air when the stick fell
from my hand and I just sank to my knees to the ground
and then forward on my face, a most extraordinary thing,
and then after a little over on my back, I could never lie
on my face for any length of time, much as I loved it, it
made me feel sick, and lay there, half an hour perhaps,
with my arms along my sides and the palms of my hands
against the pebbles and my eyes wide open straying over
the sky. Now was this my first experience of this kind, that
is the question that immediately assails one. Falls I had
had in plenty, of the kind after which unless a limb broken
you pick yourself up and go on, cursing God and man,
very different from this. With so much life gone from
knowledge how know when all began, all the variants of
the one that one by one their venom staling follow upon one
another, all life long, till you succumb. So in some way even
olden things each time are first things, no two breaths the
same, all a going over and over and all once and never
more. But let me get up now and on and get this awful day
over and on to the next. But what is the sense of going on
with all this, there is none. Day after unremembered day
until my mother's death, then in a new place soon old until
my own. And when I come to this night here among the
rocks with my two books and the strong starlight it will
have passed from me and the day that went before, my
two books, the little and the big, all past and gone, or perhaps just moments here and there still, this little sound 46
perhaps now that I don't understand so that I gather up
my things and go back into my hole, so bygone they can be
told. Over, over, there is a soft place in my heart for all
that is over, no, for the being over, I love the word, words
have been my only loves, not many. Often all day long as
I went along I have said it, and sometimes I would be
saying vero, oh vero. Oh but for those awful fidgets I have
always had I would have lived my life in a big empty
echoing room with a big old pendulum clock, just listening
and dozing, the case open so that I could watch the swinging,
moving my eyes to and fro, and the lead weights dangling
lower and lower till I got up out of my chair and wound
them up again, once a week. The third day was the look I
got from the roadman, suddenly I see that now, the ragged
old brute bent double down in the ditch leaning on his
spade or whatever it was and leering round and up at me
from under the brim of his slouch, the red mouth, how is it
I wonder I s�w him at all, that is more like it, the day I
saw the look I got from Balfe, I went in terror of him as a
child. Now he is dead and I resemble him. But let us get
on and leave these old scenes and come to these, and my
reward. Then it will not be as now, day after day, out, on,
round, back, in, like leaves turning, or torn out and thrown
crumpled away, but a long unbroken time without before
or after, light or dark, from or towards or at, the old half
knowledge of when and where gone, and of what, but kinds
of things still, all at once, all going, until nothing, there
was never anything, never can be, life and death all nothing,
that kind of thing, only a voice dreaming and droning on
all around, that is something, the voice that once was in
your mouth. Well once out on the road and free of the
property what then, I really do not know, the next thing
I was up in the bracken lashing about with my stick making
the drops fly and cursing, filthy language, the same words
over and over, I hope nobody heard me. Throat very bad,
47
to swallow was torment, and something wrong with an ear,
I kept poking at it without relief, old wax perhaps pressing
on the drum. Extraordinary still over the land, and in me
too all quite still, a coincidence, why the curses were pouring
out of me I do not know, no, that is a foolish thing to say,
and the lashing about with the stick, what possessed me
mild and weak to be doing that, as I struggled along. Is
it the stoats now, no, first I just sink down again and disappear in the ferns, up to my waist they were as I went along. Harsh things these great ferns, like starched, very
woody, terrible stalks, take the skin off your legs through
your trousers, and then the holes they hide, break your leg
if you're not careful, awful English this, fall and vanish from
view, you could lie there for weeks and no one hear you,
I often thought of that up in the mountains, no, that is a
foolish thing to say, just went on, my body doing its best
without me.
48
Document Outline
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Production History
Acknowledgments
CONTENTS
Breath
Come and Go: A Dramaticule
Act Without Words I: A Mime for One Player
Act Without Words II: A Mime for Two Players
From an Abandoned Work
Breath, and Other Shorts Page 3