MS-HRC-SB-5-9-2

[1762] in the end I'd begin to look as if I knew the
meaning of life.[1763] They might even take a breather
from time to time, without my ceasing to howl.
[1764] For they would have warned me, before they started,
You must howl, do you hear, otherwise it proves
nothing.

[1765] And worn out at last, or feeble with old
age, and my cries having ceased for want of
nourishment, they could pronounce me dead,
with every appearance of veracity.

[1766]
And without ever having had to
move I should have earned my rest and heard them,
striking softly together their weary dry old hands,
as if to shake off the dust, He'll
never move again.[1767] That would be too easy.

[1768] We
must have the heavens and God knows what else,
lights, luminaries, three monthly hope
and the joys of consolation.[1769] But let us close
this parenthesis and, with a light
heart, open the next.[1770] The noise.

[1771] How long did
I remain a pure ear?[1772] Answer, up to the moment
when it couldn't go on any longer, being too good
to last, compared to what follows.

[1773] These
millions of different sounds, always the
same, recurring without pause, are all one needs
for a head to sprout, a bud to begin with,
finally enormous, originally a silencer, then
an extinguisher when the eye joins in, and worse
than the evil, its storehouse.

[1774] But
no dwelling on this thin ice.[1775] The mechanism
matters little, provided I succeed in saying,
before becoming deaf, It's a voice, and it speaks
to me.[1776] In enquiring, boldly, if it is not mine.

[1777] In deciding, it doesn't matter how, that I have
none.[1778] In blowing ^darkly hot and cold, boiling and
frozen, with little change of sensation.[1779] It's a
starting-point, he's off, they don't see me, but
they hear me, panting, rivetted, they don't know
I'm rivetted.

[1780] He knows they are words, he is not
sure they are not his, that's how it begins, with
such a start no one ever looked back, one day he'll
make them his, when he thinks he is alone, far from
all men, out of range of every
voice, and come to the light of day they tell him of.

[1781] Yes, I know they are words, there was a time I didn't,
as I still don't know if they are mine.[1782] Their
hopes are therefore justified.

[1783] In their
shoes ^I'd be content with my knowing what I
know, I'd demand no more of me than to know
that what I hear is not the innocent and necessary
sound of dumb things in their need to endure, but
the terrified babble of the condemned to silence.