MS-HRC-SB-4-3

[1363] bonic gas, then say thanks for the nice time and go. [1364] That has
always been my dream at bottom, [1365] all the things that have always b
been my dream at bottom, [1366] so many strings and never a shaft. [1368] Yes,
an old foetus, that's what I am now, ^{hoar and impotent,} mother is done for, I've rot-
ted her, sh'^e'll drop me with the help of gangrene, pr^erhaps papa
is at the party too, I'll land head-foremost mewling in the
charnel-house, not that I'll mewl, not worth it.

[1369] All the stories
I've told myself, clinging to the putrid mucus, and swelling,
swelling.^, [1370] S^saying, Got it at last, my legend. [1371] But whh^y this sudden
heat, has anything happened, anything changed? [1372] No, the answer is
no, I shall never get born and therefore never get dead, and a
good job too. [1373] And if I tell of me and of that other who is my
little one, it is as always for want of love, well I'll be bugger-
ed, I wasn't expecting that, want of a homuncule, I can't stop.

[1374] And yet it sometimes seems to me I did get born and had a long life
and met Jackson and wandered in the towns, the woods and wilder-
nesses and tarried by the seas in tears before the islands and
peninsulas where night lit the little brief yellow lights of man
and all night the great white and coloured beamns^[₰] shining in the
caves where I was happy, crouched on the sand in the lee of the

[1374] rocks with the sma^ell of the seaweed and the wet rock and the noise
howling of the wind the waves whipping me with foam or sighing on
the beach softly clawing the shingle, no, not happy, I was never
that, but wisj^h wishing night would never end and morning never come
when men wake and say, Come on, we'll soon be dead, let's make the
best ^most of it.

[1375] But what matter whether I was born or not, have lived
or not, an^m dead or merely dying, I shall go on doing as I have al-