His Mouth Opens. From Inside Him Comes A Slow Stream, Without Breath, Without Interruption. It Flows Up Through His Body And Out Upon Me; It Passes Through The Cabin, Through The Wreck; Washing The Cliffs And Shores Of The Island, It Runs Northward And Southward To The Ends Of The Earth. Soft And Cold, Dark And Unending, It Beats Against My Eyelids, Against The Skin Of My Face.

-J. M. Coetzee

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His Mouth Opens. From Inside Him Comes

J. M. Coetzee

His Mouth Opens. From Inside Him Comes A Slow Stream, Without Breath, Without Interruption. It Flows Up Through His Body And Out Upon Me; It Passes Through The Cabin, Through The Wreck; Washing The Cliffs And Shores Of The Island, It Runs Northward And Southward To The Ends Of The Earth. Soft And Cold, Dark And Unending, It Beats Against My Eyelids, Against The Skin Of My Face.

Topic

Running

Dark

Islands

There Is First Of All The Problem Of The Opening, Namely, How To Get Us From Where We Are, Which Is, As Yet, Nowhere, To The Far Bank. It Is A Simple Bridging Problem, A Problem Of Knocking Together A Bridge. People Solve Such Problems Every Day. They Solve Them, And Having Solved Them Push On.

Simple

Bridges

People