Читать книгу The Glass Constellation - Arthur Sze - Страница 56

Sentenced to two consecutive

life terms, Robert Francis may be

paroled in twenty years. He may

walk out of jail at forty,

a free man. But the world travels

at the speed of light.

He will be a miner staggering

out of a collapsed mine. People

will have assumed he died

years ago. And, at forty,

the world will feel like jamais

vu. The barbed wire and

sunlight will be his only

friends. Perhaps, he will discern

freedom as a rat swimming in

a ditch, or pleasure as the

smell of green tea. And the full

moon, crazed with the voices

of dead men, will make him

relive again and again the double

ax murder. And will he know

himself? The Inuit have

thirty words describing varieties

of ice. I see a man in

twenty years walking into the

sunlight. He will know a thousand

words for varieties of pain.

His first act may be a knife

at the jugular, and his ensuing acts

may be terrors of the earth.