(no subject)

[deep_red_bells]

The City is of Night; perchance of Death
But certainly of Night; for never there
Can come the lucid morning's fragrant breath
After the dewy dawning's cold grey air:
The moon and stars may shine with scorn or pity
The sun has never visited that city,
For it dissolveth in the daylight fair.

Dissolveth like a dream of night away;
Though present in distempered gloom of thought
And deadly weariness of heart all day.
But when a dream night after night is brought
Throughout a week, and such weeks few or many
Recur each year for several years, can any
Discern that dream from real life in aught?

For life is but a dream whose shapes return,
Some frequently, some seldom, some by night
And some by day, some night and day: we learn,
The while all change and many vanish quite,
In their recurrence with recurrent changes
A certain seeming order; where this ranges
We count things real; such is memory's might.

A river girds the city west and south,
The main north channel of a broad lagoon,
Regurging with the salt tides from the mouth;
Waste marshes shine and glister to the moon
For leagues, then moorland black, then stony ridges;
Great piers and causeways, many noble bridges,
Connect the town and islet suburbs strewn.

Upon an easy slope it lies at large
And scarcely overlaps the long curved crest
Which swells out two leagues from the river marge.
A trackless wilderness rolls north and west,
Savannahs, savage woods, enormous mountains,
Bleak uplands, black ravines with torrent fountains;
And eastward rolls the shipless sea's unrest.

The city is not ruinous, although
Great ruins of an unremembered past,
With others of a few short years ago
More sad, are found within its precincts vast.
The street-lamps always burn; but scarce a casement
In house or palace front from roof to basement
Doth glow or gleam athwart the mirk air cast.

The street-lamps burn amid the baleful glooms,
Amidst the soundless solitudes immense
Of ranged mansions dark and still as tombs.
The silence which benumbs or strains the sense
Fulfils with awe the soul's despair unweeping:
Myriads of habitants are ever sleeping,
Or dead, or fled from nameless pestilence!

Yet as in some necropolis you find
Perchance one mourner to a thousand dead,
So there: worn faces that look deaf and blind
Like tragic masks of stone. With weary tread,
Each wrapt in his own doom, they wander, wander,
Or sit foredone and desolately ponder
Through sleepless hours with heavy drooping head.

Mature men chiefly, few in age or youth,
A woman rarely, now and then a child:
A child! If here the heart turns sick with ruth
To see a little one from birth defiled,
Or lame or blind, as preordained to languish
Through youthless life, think how it bleeds with anguish
To meet one erring in that homeless wild.

They often murmur to themselves, they speak
To one another seldom, for their woe
Broods maddening inwardly and scorns to wreak
Itself abroad; and if at whiles it grow
To frenzy which must rave, none heeds the clamour,
Unless there waits some victim of like glamour,
To rave in turn, who lends attentive show.

The City is of Night, but not of Sleep;
There sweet sleep is not for the weary brain;
The pitiless hours like years and ages creep,
A night seems termless hell. This dreadful strain
Of thought and consciousness which never ceases,
Or which some moments' stupor but increases,
This, worse than woe, makes wretches there insane.

They leave all hope behind who enter there:
One certitude while sane they cannot leave,
One anodyne for torture and despair;
The certitude of Death, which no reprieve
Can put off long; and which, divinely tender,
But waits the outstretched hand to promptly render
That draught whose slumber nothing can bereave

Though the Garden of thy Life be wholly waste, the sweet flowers
withered, the fruit-trees barren, over its wall hang ever the rich
dark clusters of the Vine of Death, within easy reach of thy hand,
which may pluck of them when it will.

-James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night

Comments

[fear-noevil.livejournal.com]

...wow.

[deep-red-bells.livejournal.com]

Wow?

[fear-noevil.livejournal.com]

S' heavy shit. Kinda...beautiful.

[deep-red-bells.livejournal.com]

It is. It's one of my favorite poems.

[fear-noevil.livejournal.com]

I...think I sorta love it.

Thanks...so you okay, then?

[deep-red-bells.livejournal.com]

That's only one part. It's much longer (http://emotionalliteracyeducation.com/classic_books_online/ctdnt10.htm).

I'm fine. Sometimes, I just get tired of living in that city.

[fear-noevil.livejournal.com]

Bookmarked that shit to print and read. Thanks, babes.

I know the feeling...I know there's another place out there, but I don't think it's for folks like us. I do think we're the reason it's there, though. Cold comfort, but I take what I can get.

[deep-red-bells.livejournal.com]

You're welcome.

At least we're not here alone.

[fear-noevil.livejournal.com]

No, we ain't...helps that the company makes it worth my while, know what I mean?

[deep-red-bells.livejournal.com]

I do.

[fear-noevil.livejournal.com]

I'm real glad. No shit.

[deep-red-bells.livejournal.com]

Me too.

[fear-noevil.livejournal.com]

That makes me even gladder, yo.

...Bee, can I ask you somethin'?

[deep-red-bells.livejournal.com]

Sure.

[fear-noevil.livejournal.com]

You think I'm a good father?

[deep-red-bells.livejournal.com]

Yes. Where'd that come from?

[fear-noevil.livejournal.com]

I dunno...got an email from Hank earlier, she had a half day at school today. She's happier in Detroit than she was here, and I guess I feel like I fucked her over, haulin' her out to Searchlight.

...I been thinkin' about going back, to be near her again. I wanna talk to Andrew, see if maybe I can get the Council to back me on it, but...

[sigh] I dunno. I get crazy when I'm alone too long.

[deep-red-bells.livejournal.com]

Searchlight can start to feel very...just, smothering, after a while.

Is Sassy...coming back, Cain?

[fear-noevil.livejournal.com]

...I don't think she is.

Reason To Pray!Cain, all official-like :P

[deep-red-bells.livejournal.com]

...Oh.

I'm...I'm really sorry.

[fear-noevil.livejournal.com]

Thanks...guess it serves me right for thinkin' I deserved it or some shit. I'm tryin' real hard not to think about it at the moment.

[deep-red-bells.livejournal.com]

...Now you sound like me. Don't do that.

I'm here if you need to talk, you know.

[fear-noevil.livejournal.com]

I wish I could sound like you. You're a better person 'n me, Bee. No shit.

...I'll remember that. Thanks.

[deep-red-bells.livejournal.com]

Not when I'm being a fatalistic bitch, you don't want to sound like me. I'm still waiting for it, Cain. To be left. Don't do that just because things didn't work out with Sass.

You better.

[fear-noevil.livejournal.com]

I just...I wanna get it right. I wanna stop fucking up. I waited too long with you, and I thank God every day we're still friends. This time, I was stupid about falling for a girl less than half my fucking age. I don't fault her...she deserves the best. That ain't me.

Don't worry, I will...else you'll smack me again. Heh.

[deep-red-bells.livejournal.com]

You didn't wait too long with me--you met me too late. Which isn't to say that there would've been anything--I don't know, honestly. I'm not good with thinking in terms of 'what might've been.' All I can see is Julian.

Sassy will be hard pressed to find better than you. You were good to her. You all but worshiped the ground she walked on, and you were good for each other. but maybe the timing was wrong. Maybe she needs to live a little more before she's ready.

[fear-noevil.livejournal.com]

But there is something...not like that, but you get my point. It stings sometimes, but I think you 'n me ended up right where we belong. You 'n him are meant for each other, and so help me, if I got a say in it? I won't let you ditch him. Not the way he makes you light up.

I know that's what it is...I just wish it didn't hurt so goddamn bad. I know you'll wanna smack me for it, but it really makes me wonder if I should just stop trying to be happy. Maybe God's testing me, maybe if I pass he'll drop someone in my lap, or something...or maybe I'll die a fucking hermit. But every time I reach up, I get set square on my ass and I'm just...raw and tired.

[deep-red-bells.livejournal.com]

I couldn't leave him if I wanted to. I couldn't even push him away, like I usually do. But I just--I'm afraid. That I'm not--that I'm leaveable. That I'm not to him what he is to me.

Once upon a time I might've agreed with you...and I'll say this. The best thing that ever happened to me happened when I wasn't looking for it. When I wasn't expecting it. Stop reaching for it so hard, maybe. Just...let things happen.