XI 

 THE BAY OF BUTTERFLIES 



BUTTERFLIES doing strange things in very 

 beautiful ways were in my mind when I sat 

 down, but by the time my pen was uncapped 

 my thoughts had shifted to rocks. The ink was 

 refractory and a vigorous flick sent a shower of 

 green drops over the sand on which I was sitting, 

 and as I watched the ink settle into the absorbent 

 quartz the inversions of our grandmothers' 

 blotters I thought of what jolly things the lost 

 ink might have been made to say about butter' 

 flies and rocks, if it could have flowed out slowly 

 in curves and angles and dots over paper for 

 the things we might have done are always so 

 much more worthy than those which we actually 

 accomplish. When at last I began to write, a 

 song came to my ears and my mind again looped 

 backward. At least, there came from the very 

 deeps of the water beyond the mangroves a low, 

 metallic murmur; and my Stormouth says that 

 in Icelandic sangra means to murmur. So what 



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