Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing.

It is the blight man was born for. It is Margaret you mourn for.

I have so much hate that it has turned into love.

The vase was placed upon my desk, and there were orange-blossoms in it—orange-blossoms, in an English winter!

Girl Without HandsWalking through the ruinson your way to workthat do not look like ruinswith the sunlight pouring overthe seen worldlike hail or meltedsilver, that brightand magnificent, each leafand stone quickened and specific in it,and you can't hold it,you can't hold any of it. Distance surrounds you,marked out by the ends of your armswhen they are stretched to their fullest.You can go no farther than this,you think, walking forward,pushing the distance in front of youlike a metal cart on wheelswith its barriers and horizontals.Appearance melts away from you,the offices and pyramidson the horizon shimmer and cease.No one can enter that circleyou have made, that clean circleof dead space you have madeand stay inside,mourning because it is clean.Then there's the girl, in the white dress,meaning purity, or the failureto be any colour. She has no hands, it's true.The scream that happened to the airwhen they were taken offsurrounds her now like an aureoleof hot sand, of no sound.Everything has bled out of her.Only a girl like thiscan know what's happened to you.If she were here she wouldreach out her arms towardsyou now, and touch youwith her absent handsand you would feel nothing, but you would betouched all the same.

I only mean, Bessy, there's good and bad in everything in this world; and as you felt the bad up here, I thought it was but fair you should know the bad down there.