Sometimes, however, there is more than hope.Sometimes there is reason.

Violinists wear the imprint on their necks with prideFor they are the players of harmony.Pilgrims, too, wear the imprint on their foreheads with prideFor they are the conductors of unity.And Lovers? Why, they are made humble by the imprint on their heartsFor they are merely the instruments of rhapsody.

They have left the first stage of romance—the rhapsody of us. Where everything is you-me or me-you or a giddily tentative we. Now him and her are asserting themselves, each given a private, pensive depth. Within the rhapsody of us, Elijah could think, I don’t really know you, but I will. Now he is not so sure.

This is the fiction that I’m referring to as rhapsody, this stitching of mimetic representation, oneiric imagery, ludic rules, allegoric morals, satiric critique and diegetic story into complex quiltings of narrative.

The lamp hummed:'Regard the moon,La lune ne garde aucune rancune,She winks a feeble eye,She smiles into corners.She smoothes the hair of the grass.The moon has lost her memory.A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,Her hand twists a paper rose,That smells of dust and old Cologne,She is aloneWith all the old nocturnal smellsThat cross and cross across her brain."The reminiscence comesOf sunless dry geraniumsAnd dust in crevices,Smells of chestnuts in the streets,And female smells in shuttered rooms,And cigarettes in corridorsAnd cocktail smells in bars.

Ruby describes the decorations at the banquet. 'It was like little gardens of rhapsody on every table. It was divine.