#conradaiken

"The Grasshopper," by Conrad Aiken

"Wait, Paul. Just wait till we're alone together. I will tell you something new, something cold, something sleepy, something of cease and peace, and the long bright curve of space…I will be waiting for you." - Silent Snow, Secret Snow (1971) #orsonwelles #nightgallery #generkearney #conradaiken #tvhorror #saturdayfrights #podcast https://www.instagram.com/p/BsZybHinCwW/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=10ydorieoebyg

Beloved, let us once more praise the rain. Let us discover some new alphabet, For this, the often praised; and be ourselves, The rain, the chickweed, and the burdock leaf, The green-white privet flower, the spotted stone, And all that welcomes the rain; the sparrow too,— Who watches with a hard eye from seclusion, Beneath the elm-tree bough, till rain is done. There is an oriole who, upside down, Hangs at his nest, and flicks an orange wing,— Under a tree as dead and still as lead; There is a single leaf, in all this heaven Of leaves, which rain has loosened from its twig: The stem breaks, and it falls, but it is caught Upon a sister leaf, and thus she hangs; There is an acorn cup, beside a mushroom Which catches three drops from the stooping cloud. The timid bee goes back to the hive; the fly Under the broad leaf of the hollyhock Perpends stupid with cold; the raindark snail Surveys the wet world from a watery stone... And still the syllables of water whisper: The wheel of cloud whirs slowly: while we wait In the dark room; and in your heart I find One silver raindrop,—on a hawthorn leaf,— Orion in a cobweb, and the World.

Watch long enough, and you will see the leaf Fall from the bough. Without a sound it falls: And soundless meets the grass. . . And so you have A bare bough, and a dead leaf in dead grass. Something has come and gone. And that is all. But what were all the tumults in this action? What wars of atoms in the twing, what ruins, Fiery and disastrous, in the leaf? Timeless the tumult was, but gave no sign. Only, the leaf fell, and the bough is bare. This is the world: there is no more than this. The unseen and disastrous prelude, shaking The trivial act from the terrific action. Speak: and the ghosts of change, past and to come, Throng the brief word. The maelstrom has us all.