Whales In Mid-ocean, Suspended In The Waves

She Looked At Him, And Oh, The Weariness To Her, Of The Effort To Understand Another Language, The Weariness Of Hearing Him, Attending To Him, Making Out Who He Was, As He Stood There Fair-bearded And Alien, Looking At Her. She Knew Something Of Him, Of His Eyes. But She Could Not Grasp Him. She Closed Her Eyes.

Melville Had To Fight, Fight Against The Existing World, Against His Own Very Self. Only He Would Never Quite Put The Knife In The Heart Of His Paradisal Ideal. Somehow, Somewhere, Somewhen, Love Should Be A Fulfillment, And Life Should Be A Thing Of Bliss. That Was His Fixed Ideal. Fata Morgana. That Was The Pin He Tortured Himself On, Like A Pinned-down Butterfly.

All Hopes Of Eternity And All Gain From The Past He Would Have Given To Have Her There, To Be Wrapped Warm With Him In One Blanket, And Sleep, Only Sleep. It Seemed The Sleep With The Woman In His Arms Was The Only Necessity.

For {she} Had Adopted The Standard Of The Young: What There Was In The Moment Was Everything. And Moments Followed One Another Without Necessarily Belonging To One Another.

Ours Is Essentially A Tragic Age, So We Refuse To Take It Tragically. The Cataclysm Has Happened, We Are Among The Ruins, We Start To Build Up New Little Habitats, To Have New Little Hopes. It Is Rather Hard Work: There Is Now No Smooth Road Into The Future: But We Go Round, Or Scramble Over The Obstacles. We’ve Got To Live, No Matter How Many Skies Have Fallen.