now. That first infatuation, I mean; that sheer infatuation with and marveling over the beauty and power of words. That has gone out of me. Used up, I guess. So I can’t write poetry any more. It takes me too long to say things, now.”
“We all wrote poetry, when we were young,” the Semitic man said. “Some of us even put it down on paper. But all of us wrote it.”
“Yes,” repeated Fairchild, turning slowly onward through the volume. “Listen:
“‘O spring O wanton O cruel
baring to the curved and hungry hand
of march your white unsubtle thighs . . .”
And listen.” He turned onward. Mrs. Wiseman was gazing aft where Jenny and Mr. Talliaferro had come into view and now leaned together upon the rail. The Semitic man listened with weary courtesy.
“‘. . .above unsapped convolvulæ of hills
april a bee sipping perplexed with pleasure. . .’
“It’s a kind of childlike faith in the efficacy of words, you see, a kind of belief that circumstance somehow will invest the veriest platitude with magic. And, darn it, it does happen at times, let it be historically or grammatically incorrect or physically impossible; let it even be trite: there comes a time when it will be invested with a something not of this life, this world, at all. It’s a kind of fire, you know. . . .” He fumbled himself among words, staring at them, at the Semitic man’s sad quizzical eyes and Mrs. Wiseman’s averted face.
“Somebody, some drug clerk or something, has shredded the tender—and do you know what I believe? I believe that he’s
