Through all of them
life sends its intimate and sacred breath.
One becomes aware of such curious facts in the rain at night and one's
iconoclasm, like a broken umbrella, hangs useless from one's hand.
Tomorrow these people who are now asleep will be stirring, giving vent to
outrageous ideas, championing incredulous banalities, prostrating
themselves before imbecile superstitions. Tomorrow they will rise and
begin forthwith to lie, quibble, cheat, steal, fourflush and kill, each
and all inspired by the solacing monomania that every one of their words
and gestures is a credible variant of perfection. Yes, tomorrow they will
be as they were yesterday.
But in this rain at night they rest from their perfections, they lay aside
for a few hours their paper masks. And one can contemplate them with a
curious absence of indignation or criticism. There is something warm and
intimate about the vision of many people sleeping in the beds above the
darkened store fronts of this little street. Their bodies have been in the
world so long--almost as long as the stones out of which their houses are
made. So many things have happened to them, so many debacles and monsters
and horrors have swept them off their feet .
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