So the sad tale a last time told they sat on as though turned to stone. Through the single window dawn shed no light. From the street no sound of reawakening. Or was it that buried in who knows what thoughts they paid no heed? To light of day. To sound of reawakening. What thoughts who knows.
Thoughts, no, not thoughts. Profounds of mind. Of mindlessness. Whither no light can reach. No sound. So sat on as though turned no stone. The sad tale a last time told.
Pause.
Nothing is left to tell.
—from Ohio Impromptu.
There I was, warm and bright smoking my tobacco-pipe, watching the warm bright wall, when suddenly somewhere some little thing slipped, some little tiny thing. Millions of little things moving all together out of their old place, into a new one nearby, and furtively, as though it was forbidden. It was the same sun, and the same wall, but so changed that I felt I had been transported, without my having remarked it, to some quite different yard, and to some quite different season, in an unfamiliar country.
But in what did the change consist? What was changed, and how? What was changed, if my information is correct, was the sentiment that a change, other than a change of degree, had taken place. What was changed was existence off the ladder.
This I am happy to inform you is the reversed metamorphosis. The Laurel into Daphne. The old thing where it always was, back again.
—from Watt.
