MS-TCD-4662

[0674] well, that my death and my death alone,
prevents him from going on, from winning,
losing, enjoying, suffering, rotting
and dying, and that even had I lived
he would have waited, before he died, for
his body to be dead. [0675] That is what is
called coming down a peg (taking in sail)

[0676] My body does not yet make up its
mind. [0677] But I think it weighs
heavier in the bed, ^{flattens and spreads}.
[0678] My breath, when it comes back, fills the
room with its noise, though my chest moves
no more than a sleeping child's.

[0679] I open
my eyes and gaze unblinkingly and long,
as when a tiny child I gritted the novelties, and then the antiquities,
at the night sky. [0680] Between it and me the pane,
misted, smeared with the filth of years.
[0681] I should like to breathe upon it, but it is
too far away.

[0684] It is such a night as Kaspar
David Friedrich loved, tempestuous and
bright. [0685] That name that comes back to me, these
Christian names. [0686] The clouds scud, rapped,
tattered by the wind, over a limpid ground.
[0687] If I had the patience to wait, I wd. see the
moon. [0688] But I have not.

[0689] Now that I have
^looked I hear the wind. [0690] I close my eyes and
it mingles with my breath. [0691] Words and
images ^{run riot} in my head,
, jarring, merging,
?, unending.

[0692] But beyond
this tumult there is a great calm, and a
great indifference, [0693] never really to be broken
by anything any more. [0694] The mattress is hollow like
a trough. [0695] I hid in the bottom, clasped by the two sides.

[0696] I turn a little on my side, press my mouth
against the pillow, and my nose, crush
against the pillow my old hairs now
snow white no doubt, pull the blanket over
my head. [0697] I feel, deep down in my trunk, I
cannot be more explicit, pains that seem new