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The elm tree on the slope forms a broken circle shape with its curved trunk and branches. The narrator's mouth is also shaped like a broken circle as his head lies twisted to the side. For years, his mouth has remained open, painted in darkness. The narrator had a secret relationship with a woman who promised to meet him at nightfall, but she never came. He climbed the tree and his mouth opened in death as he saw her door was locked and she lay dead inside. Though they cut down the tree, the narrator remained within the broken circle shape of the trunk. Over the years, he witnessed the village below and saw the flower on his lover's grave dry up. Now, she drifts
Description originale:
John Gordon, "The Broken O", in: The Spitfire Grave and other stories.
The elm tree on the slope forms a broken circle shape with its curved trunk and branches. The narrator's mouth is also shaped like a broken circle as his head lies twisted to the side. For years, his mouth has remained open, painted in darkness. The narrator had a secret relationship with a woman who promised to meet him at nightfall, but she never came. He climbed the tree and his mouth opened in death as he saw her door was locked and she lay dead inside. Though they cut down the tree, the narrator remained within the broken circle shape of the trunk. Over the years, he witnessed the village below and saw the flower on his lover's grave dry up. Now, she drifts
The elm tree on the slope forms a broken circle shape with its curved trunk and branches. The narrator's mouth is also shaped like a broken circle as his head lies twisted to the side. For years, his mouth has remained open, painted in darkness. The narrator had a secret relationship with a woman who promised to meet him at nightfall, but she never came. He climbed the tree and his mouth opened in death as he saw her door was locked and she lay dead inside. Though they cut down the tree, the narrator remained within the broken circle shape of the trunk. Over the years, he witnessed the village below and saw the flower on his lover's grave dry up. Now, she drifts
mouth is like the leaning elm. Pale moths the colour of her inner arm powder the air. We had secrets. Forbidden to meet, we met. And at midday she promised to leave her hostile house and come to me when darkness fell. I watched as night's tide stole up the slope. The black stones were drowned, seas under. And nothing stirred. Her way was clear and yet she did not come. Her midday promise mocked me like a grin. The climb was easy. I lay, then slid within the black cascade of leaves. One jerk, my mouth flew wide, and in the crack of dying my soul's eyes saw. She was not free. Her door was locked. Her anguish in that instant reached to me and as I slid she also fell. She lay, and all night long, senseless and dead, we spoke under the wide, still elm. The Broken 0 They thought they cut me down, but I remained. Within the wider curve my mouth curved also, a broken 0 within a broken 0. The roots of the vast elm, like a fist dug into fleece, My eyes were never closed. I saw the lost nights and grasp the dusty slope. The trunk leans and the branches the long change. I saw the flower dry on the cut stem. spread like a slow wave breaking, reaching out to over- I saw softness turn hard. She never came. hang the slope's slow undertow. Curving over the last of But now the long change sees her under her sheet, the daylight, the elm makes a broken 0. Which, from the cut flower, dying. All that was lost is lost - but teeth to teeth, as my head twists sideways, is the shape she is like the moths now, drifting inside the broken 0 of my mouth; my mouth opened wide and held open where I am waiting. here, on this slope, for year after year. Oh, the swifts' thin screams stitch the dusk in folds of gossamer where the leaves, ungreen in darkness, cease to stir as the earth sinks into the last of the twilight. The village below becomes as black as stones. For seventy years of nights my dead eyes have seen them JOHN GORDON