Septembre 1923

Just when the eyes of Frenchmen were tiring of the eternal sameness of the realistic drama—"slices of life"—when only the music halls could touch for a moment our poor hearts dried up by poetry, the cinema was born.

Miranda slept in the orchard, lying in a long chair beneath the apple-tree. Her book had fallen into the grass, and her finger still seemed to point at the sentence "Ce pays est vraiment un des coins du monde ou le rire des filles eclate le mieux . . ." as if she had fallen asleep just there. The opals on her finger flushed green, flushed rosy, and again flushed orange as the sun, oozing through the apple-trees, filled them. Then, when the breeze blew, her purple dress rippled like a flower attached to a stalk; the grasses nodded; and the white butterfly came blowing this way and that just above her face.

Simple as a snake to the eye, but curious in motions. . . . In this a savage peace of foothills piled as green melons, of rivers walked by snipe

History, history! We fools, what do we know or care? History begins for us with murder and enslavement, not with discovery. No, we are not Indians but we are men of their world. The blood means nothing; the spirit, the ghost of the land moves in the blood, moves the blood. It is we who ran to the shore naked, we who cried, "Heavenly Man!" These are the inhabitants of our souls, our murdered souls that lie .. . agh. Listen!

Night, soft belly of a pregnant Negress, throbs evenly against the torso of the South. Night throbs a womb-song to the South. Cane and cotton-fields, pine forests, cypress swamps, saw-mills, and factories are fecund at her touch. Night's womb-song sets them singing. Night winds are the breathing of the unborn child whose calm throbbing in the belly of a Negress sets them somnolently singing. Hear their song.

As your Aboriginal Ancestors did? From their leafy dwellings in the primordial trees they peered ever anxiously into a profound darkness teeming with imaginary terrors

As your Aboriginal Ancestors did? From their leafy dwellings in the primordial trees they peered ever anxiously into a profound darkness teeming with imaginary terrors

What? What is to be? Roses or worms? Or roses and worms? Or is it seafood, snails, eels, mussels, clams and scallops?

They carry him off in a one-horse hack and he won't be thinking of coming back. They CARry him off in a ONE-horse hack and he WON'T be thinking of COMing back.