THE MORNING WATCH
221
the fallen
slivers
of the ruined house
it
seemed, they were pursued by the
chiding,
familiar song of an ambushed
bird
whose kind they did not
know; and at the far
side
of the clearing Richard stopped short and
the others passed him: for here, abject against sharp bark, he found
a locust shell, transparent
silver
breathed with gold, the whole back
split, the hard claws, its only
remaining
strength, so clenched
into
the
bark that it was only with great care and gentleness that he was able to
detach the shell without destroying it.
It was as
if
air had been tightened into substance; only by touch
and sight, not at all by weight, could he know he held
it.
He held
it
in his cupped hand and looked at the hunched, cloven back, turned it
over with one fingertip and examined the brutally elaborate structure
of the legs and the little talons. He tested: they could pierce a finger. He
turned
it
again and held it near his eyes: the eyes looked into his. Yes
even the eyes were there, blind silver globes which had so perfectly
contained the living eyes: even the small rudimentary face in its con–
vulsed and fierce expression, the face of a human embryo, he could
remember the engraving in a book of his grandfather's, a paroxysm of
armor, frowning, scowling, glaring, very serious, angry, remote, dead,
a devil, older, stranger than devils, as early, ancient of days, primordial,
as trilobites.
Dinosaurs
heaved and strove; a pterodactyl, cold-winged,
skated on miasmic air, ferns sprang, to make coal in these very coves,
more huge than the grandest chestnuts. Silurian, Mesozoic, Protozoic,
Jurassic, all the planet one featureless and smoky marsh, Crowns,
Thrones,
Dominions,
Principalities, Archaeozoic, through all ranks and
kingdoms, to the central height, armed in the radiant cruelty of im–
mortal patience, Ages and Angels marched clanging in his soul.
When did he come out? Just now? Just this spring? Or
has
he
stayed all winter. And that would mean all fall and summer before.
I'd have seen him; last fall; last spring.
If
he was there all the time and I didn't before, how come I saw
him now?
All winter. All year. Or just since the first warm weather. Or
just now before I found
him.
That whole split back. Bet it doesn't hurt any worse than that to
be crucified.
He crossed himself.
He sure
did
hold on hard.
He tried to imagine gripping hard enough that he broke his back
wide open and pulled himself out of each leg and arm and finger
and
toe so cleanly and completely that the exact shape would be left
intact.
