MS-HRC-SB-4-3

[1375] ways done, not knowing what it is I do, nor who I am, nor where I
am, nor if I am. [1376] Yes, a little creature, I shall try and make a
little creature, to hold in my arms, a little creature in my image,
no matter what I say. [1377] And seeing what a poor thing I have made, or
how like myself, I shall eat it. [1378] Then be alone a long time, un-
happy, not knowing what my prayer should be, nor to whom.

[1379] I have taken a long time to find him again, but I have found
him again^[₰]. [1380] How did I know it was he? ^he, [1381] ^{I don't know}. [1382] And what can have changed him
so? [1383] Life perhaps, the struggle to love, to eat, to escape the
redressre^ers of wrongs. [1384] I slip into him, I suppose in the hope of
learning something. [1385] But it is a stratum, strata, without debris or
vestiges. [1386] But before I am done I shall find traces of what was.
[1387] I ran him down in the heart of the town, sitting on a bench. [1389] How
did I know it was he? [1390] The eyes perhaps.

[1391] No, I don't know how I knew,
I'll take back nothing. [1392] Perhaps it is not he. [1393] No mattern^, [1394] he is mine
now, [1395] living flesh and needless to say male, living with that even-
ing life which is like a convalescence, if my memories are mine,
and which you savour doddering about in the wake of the fitful sun,
or deeper than the dead, in the corridors of the underground rail-
way [1396] and the press ^{stink [⁁] stench} of their harassed mobs scurrying from cradle to
grave to get to the right place at the right time.

[1397] What more do I
want? [1398] Yes, those were the days, quick to night and well beguiled
with the search for warmth and reasonably edible scraps. [1399] And you
imagine it will be so till the end. [1400] But suddenly all begins to
rage and roar again, you are lost in forests of high threshing
ferns or whirled far out on the face of wind-swept wastes, till