Sand And Foam Quotes

Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.

إذا كنت لا ترى غير ما يكشف عنه الضوء ولا تسمع غير ما يُعلنُ عنه الصوت، فأنت في الحق لا تبصر ولا تسمع.

You may forget with whom you laughed, but you will never forget with whom you wept.

They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price.

Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky.

When you reach the end of what you should know, you will be at the beginning of what you should sense.

My loneliness was born when men praised my talkative faults and blamed my silent virtues.

انت اثنان : واحد متيقظ في الظلمة والثاني غافل في النور

Half of what I say is meaningless; but I say it so that the other half may reach you.

Sadness is but a wall between two gardens.

There is a space between man's imagination and man's attainment that may only be traversed by his longing.

Words are timeless. You should utter them or write them with a knowledge of their timelessness.

When life does not find a singer to sing her heart she produces a philosopher to speak her mind.

Desire is half of life; indifference is half of death.

Strange, the desire for certain pleasures is a part of my pain.

Generosity is not in giving me that which I need more than you do, but it is in giving me that which you need more than I do.

We live only to discover beauty. All else is a form of waiting

Men who do not forgive women their little faults will never enjoy their great virtues.

When you were a wandering desire in the mist, I too was there, a wandering desire. Then we sought one another, and out of our eagerness dreams were born. And dreams were time limitless, and dreams were space without measure.

I have never agreed with my other self wholly. The truth of the matter seems to lie between us.

If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?

Seven times I have despised my soul: The first time when I saw her being meek that she might attain height. The second time when I saw her limping before the crippled. The third time when she was given to choose between the hard and the easy, and she chose the easy. The fourth time when she committed a wrong, and comforted herself that others also commit wrong. The fifth time when she forbode for weakness, and attributed her patience to strength. The sixth time when she despised the ugliness of a face, and knew not that it was one of her own masks. And the seventh time when she sang a song of praise, and deemed it a virtue.

You see but your shadow when you turn your back to the sun.

نصف ما أقوله لك لا معنى له، غير أني اقوله لعل النصف الآخر يبلغك

I am forever walking upon these shores, Betwixt the sand and the foam, The high tide will erase my foot prints, And the wind will blow away the foam, But the sea and the shore will remain forever.

Yes, there is a Nirvanah; it is leading your sheep to a green pasture, and in putting your child to sleep, and in writing the last line of your poem

Remembrance is a form of meeting.

All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind.

It was but yesterday I thought myself a fragment quivering without rhythm in the sphere of life. Now I know that I am the sphere, and all life in rhythmic fragments moves within me.

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

على هذه الشطآن أسعى إلى الأبد بين الرمل مسعاى و بين الزَبَد سوف يطغى المدّ على آثار قدمى فيمحو ما وجد و تطوّح الريح بعيداً بعيداً بالزَبَد أما البحر و أما الشاطئ ، فباقيان إلى الأبد

الرغبة نصف الحياة، وقلة المبالاة نصف الموت

كم من امرأة تستعير قلب الرجل، وما أندر اللائي يقدرن على امتلاكه

You may forget the one with whom you have laughed, but never the one with whom you have wept.

إني لأوثر أن أكون الأدنى بين ذوي الأحلام الطامحين إلى تحقيقها على أن أكون الأعلى بين مَنْ لا حُلم لهم ولا طموح.

رُبَّ إخفاق في حياء أنبل من نجاح في تبجُّح.

نصف ما أقوله لك لا معنى له، غير أنى أقوله لعل النصف الآخر يبلغك

قد ينتحر المرء خلال دفاعه عن نفسه

قد تكون أسمى الفضائل في عالمنا هي أدناها في عالم آخر

رحاله أنا وملاح،ومع مطلع كل يوم ينكشف لى فى روحى أقليم جديد

الرحمة نصف العدالة

وجدتني أخرس مرة واحدة: حين سألني امرؤ " من انت؟

خيّل إلي في الأمس أني ذرة تتموج مرتجفة في دائرة الحياة بغير انتظام. واليوم أعرف كل المعرفة أني انا الدائرة وأن الحياة بأسرها تتحرك فيَ بذرات منتظمة. يقولون في يقظتهم : ما أنت والعالم الذي تعيش فيه سوى حبة رمل على شاطىء غير متناه لبحر غير متناه. وفي حلمي اقول لهم : أنا هو البحر غير المتناهي . وما جميع العوالم سوى حبات من الرمل على شاطئي

قد تنسى مَنْ شاركك الضحك، ولكنك لا تنسى أبدًا مَنْ شاطرك البكاء.

You cannot judge any man beyond your knowledge of him, and how small is your knowledge.

ثمة مسافة بين ما يتخيّل المرء وما يحقّقه، لا يقطعها غير شوقه.

من العجب أن حماستنا حين ندافع عن سيئاتنا أكثر منها حين ندافع عن طيّباتنا

Long ago you were a dream in your mother's sleep, and then she awoke to give you birth.

أنت حرُّ حين تطالعك شمس يومك، وحرُّ حين تُظلّك نجوم الليل. وأنت حرُّ حين لا شمس ولا قمر ولا نجوم. بل أنت حرُّ حين تُغمض عينيك عن كل ما هو موجود ولكنك عبدٌ لمن أحببت لأنك تُحبّه وعبدٌ لمن أحبّك لأنه يُحبك.

الذكرى صورة من صور اللقاء

كلنا سجناء، غير أن فئة منّا في زنازين ذات نوافذ، وفئة لا نوافذ لزنازينها

الوحدة عاصفة ساكنة تحطّم أغصاننا الميتة. وهي مع ذلك تضرب بجذورها في أقصى أعماق القلب النابض من الأرض الحية

الذكرى هى شكل من اشكال اللقاء

إنما نعيش لنهتدي إلى الجمال، وكل ما خلا ذلك نوع من الانتظار

ما أهْونني حين تهبني الحياة ذهبًا وأهبُك فضة، ثم أعدّ نفسي كريمًا.

قد تنسى الذي ضحكت معه ولكن لن تنسى الذي بكيت معه.

حينما تتوق إلى إلى نعمة لا تعرف لها اسماً، وحينما تحزن دونما تدري لذلك سبباً، فأنت في الحق تنمو مع كل ما ينمو ويرتفع إلى ذاتك الكبرى

الحب الذي لا يُضفي على نفسه جديداً كل يوم يستحيل عادة، ثم لا يلبث أن يكون رقاً

ما أجهل من يعطيك مما في جيبه عسى أن يأخذ مما في قلبك

الجمال العظيم يأسرني, ولكن الجمال الأعظم يحررني من أسر ذاته

They dip their pens in our hearts and think they are inspired.

كل ما هو مفطور فينا صامت، أما المكتسب فثرثار

ما إن يعظُم فرحك أو شجنك حتى تمسي الدنيا صغيرة في عينيك

لن يسعك أن تحكم على الآخرين إلا بما تُمليه عليك معرفتك لذاتك. والآن خبّرني: أيُّنا البرىء وأيُّنا المذنب؟

Some of our children are our justifications and some are but our regrets.

لن يكشف حقيقتَكَ إلا حزنٌ عميق أو فرحٌ كبير.

You are blind and I am deaf and dumb, so let us touch hands and understand.

كيف افقد إيماني بعدل الحياة، وأحلام الراقدين على الفراش ليست أجمل من أحلام الذين يفترشون الغبراء ؟

إذا أبصرتَ رجلاً يقاد الى السجن فناجِ نفسك لعله قد خلص من سجن اكثر ضيقا , وإذا أبصرت رجلاً مخمورا فقل في نفسك عساه يرى النجاة بها من حال أشد قُبحاً

لو أننا قنعت بكل ما تعرفه أنت، فأي مكان يبقى لكل ما لاتعرفه؟

إنْ أدَرْتَ ظَهْرَكَ إلى الشَّمس، لنْ ترى سوى ظلِّك.

It takes two of us to discover truth: one to utter it and one to understand it.

يغمسون اقلامهم في دماء قلوبنا ثمَّ يدَّعون الوحي والإلهام .

Current-borne, wave-flung, tugged hugely by the whole might of ocean, the jellyfish drifts in the tidal abyss. The light shines through it, and the dark enters it. Borne, flung, tugged from anywhere to anywhere, for in the deep sea there is no compass but nearer and farther, higher and lower, the jellyfish hangs and sways; pulses move slight and quick within it, as the vast diurnal pulses beat in the moondriven sea. Hanging, swaying, pulsing, the most vulnerable and insubstantial creature, it has for its defense the violence and power of the whole ocean, to which it has entrusted its being, its going, and its will. But here rise the stubborn continents. The shelves of gravel and the cliffs of rock break from water baldly into air, that dry, terrible outerspace of radiance and instability, where there is no support for life. And now, now the currents mislead and the waves betray, breaking their endless circle, to leap up in loud foam against rock and air, breaking.... What will the creature made all of seadrift do on the dry sand of daylight; what will the mind do, each morning, waking?

ليس السخاء بأن تعطيني ما أنا بحاجة إليه أكثر منك،بل السخاء في أن تعطيني ما تحتاج إليه أكثر منّي.

ياعجباً، إن الرغبة في لذّات معينة هي بعض المي

لو أن ما يقولونه عن الخير والشر كان حقا، إذا لأضحت حياتي جريمة متصلة

اذا كان قلبك بركانا فأنّى لك أن ترى الازهار تتفتّح بين يديك

ألا تحسد الأرواح القاطنة في الأثير الإنسان على كآبته ؟؟

الحق يُعرف في كل حال، ولا ينطق به إلا في بعض الأحوال

البغضاء موت. من منكم يحب أن يكون لحداً

The real in us is silent; the acquired is talkative.

October Fullness” Little by little, and also in great leaps, life happened to me, and how insignificant this business is. These veins carried my blood, which I scarcely ever saw, I breathed the air of so many places without keeping a sample of any. In the end, everyone is aware of this: nobody keeps any of what he has, and life is only a borrowing of bones. The best thing was learning not to have too much either of sorrow or of joy, to hope for the chance of a last drop, to ask more from honey and from twilight. Perhaps it was my punishment. Perhaps I was condemned to be happy. Let it be known that nobody crossed my path without sharing my being. I plunged up to the neck into adversities that were not mine, into all the sufferings of others. It wasn’t a question of applause or profit. Much less. It was not being able to live or breathe in this shadow, the shadow of others like towers, like bitter trees that bury you, like cobblestones on the knees. Our own wounds heal with weeping, our own wounds heal with singing, but in our own doorway lie bleeding widows, Indians, poor men, fishermen. The miner’s child doesn’t know his father amidst all that suffering. So be it, but my business was the fullness of the spirit: a cry of pleasure choking you, a sigh from an uprooted plant, the sum of all action. It pleased me to grow with the morning, to bathe in the sun, in the great joy of sun, salt, sea-light and wave, and in that unwinding of the foam my heart began to move, growing in that essential spasm, and dying away as it seeped into the sand.

هَبني صمتاً فأغلبُ به الليل جرأة

You are a slave to him whom you love because you love him. And a slave to him who loves you because he loves you.

العظيم حقآ هو الذي لايحب ان يسود أحدآ ولا يحب أن يسوده أحد

A bigot is a stone-deaf orator.

بالأمس القريب خلتُني شَظيّة ترتعد نافرةَ في فَلك الحياة. والآن أعلمُ أنني أنا الفلك، تَجري فيَّ الحياة كلها شظايا متّسقة. يقولون لي في يقَظتهم: ما أنت والكون الذي يضمُّك إلا حبّة من رمل، على ساحل لا يتناهى لبحر لا يتناهى. وفي حُلمي أقول لهم: إنني أنا البحرُ لا نهاية له، وليست العوالم كلها غير حبّات من رمل على ساحلي.

EDMUND *Then with alcoholic talkativeness You've just told me some high spots in your memories. Want to hear mine? They're all connected with the sea. Here's one. When I was on the Squarehead square rigger, bound for Buenos Aires. Full moon in the Trades. The old hooker driving fourteen knots. I lay on the bowsprit, facing astern, with the water foaming into spume under me, the masts with every sail white in the moonlight, towering high above me. I became drunk with the beauty and signing rhythm of it, and for a moment I lost myself -- actually lost my life. I was set free! I dissolved in the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm, became moonlight and the ship and the high dim-starred sky! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy, within something greater than my own life, or the life of Man, to Life itself! To God, if you want to put it that way. Then another time, on the American Line, when I was lookout on the crow's nest in the dawn watch. A calm sea, that time. Only a lazy ground swell and a slow drowsy roll of the ship. The passengers asleep and none of the crew in sight. No sound of man. Black smoke pouring from the funnels behind and beneath me. Dreaming, not keeping looking, feeling alone, and above, and apart, watching the dawn creep like a painted dream over the sky and sea which slept together. Then the moment of ecstatic freedom came. the peace, the end of the quest, the last harbor, the joy of belonging to a fulfillment beyond men's lousy, pitiful, greedy fears and hopes and dreams! And several other times in my life, when I was swimming far out, or lying alone on a beach, I have had the same experience. Became the sun, the hot sand, green seaweed anchored to a rock, swaying in the tide. Like a saint's vision of beatitude. Like a veil of things as they seem drawn back by an unseen hand. For a second you see -- and seeing the secret, are the secret. For a second there is meaning! Then the hand lets the veil fall and you are alone, lost in the fog again, and you stumble on toward nowhere, for no good reason! *He grins wryly. It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a sea gull or a fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must always be a a little in love with death! TYRONE *Stares at him -- impressed. Yes, there's the makings of a poet in you all right. *Then protesting uneasily. But that's morbid craziness about not being wanted and loving death. EDMUND *Sardonically The *makings of a poet. No, I'm afraid I'm like the guy who is always panhandling for a smoke. He hasn't even got the makings. He's got only the habit. I couldn't touch what I tried to tell you just now. I just stammered. That's the best I'll ever do, I mean, if I live. Well, it will be faithful realism, at least. Stammering is the native eloquence of us fog people.

May yours be the sparkle of light on the ocean, The whisper of foam on the sea, The warm sand guiding your feet safely home, A pebble in your pocket from me. Some sea glass, a starfish, some driftwood, a whelk, Treasures washed up on the shore. A flower, a feather, an urchin, a pearl, Keep your eyes open for more. May you know yourself held in the palm of Her hand, Blessed by the waves wild and free, Blown by the wind, anointed with salt, Beloved of She of the Sea.

Liberty On my notebooks from school On my desk and the trees On the sand, on the snow I write your name On every page read On all the white sheets Stone blood paper or ash I write your name On the golden images On the soldier’s weapons On the crowns of kings I write your name On the jungle, the desert The nests and the bushes On the echo of childhood I write your name On the wonder of nights On the white bread of days On the seasons engaged I write your name On all my blue rags On the pond mildewed sun On the lake living moon I write your name On the fields, the horizon The wings of the birds On the windmill of shadows I write your name On the foam of the clouds On the sweat of the storm On dark insipid rain I write your name On the glittering forms On the bells of colour On physical truth I write your name On the wakened paths On the opened ways On the scattered places I write your name On the lamp that gives light On the lamp that is drowned On my house reunited I write your name On the bisected fruit Of my mirror and room On my bed’s empty shell I write your name On my dog greedy tender On his listening ears On his awkward paws I write your name On the sill of my door On familiar things On the fire’s sacred stream I write your name On all flesh that’s in tune On the brows of my friends On each hand that extends I write your name On the glass of surprises On lips that attend High over the silence I write your name On my ravaged refuges On my fallen lighthouses On the walls of my boredom I write your name On passionless absence On naked solitude On the marches of death I write your name On health that’s regained On danger that’s past On hope without memories I write your name By the power of the word I regain my life I was born to know you And to name you LIBERTY

repatterns our brains and changes our biology; the new experience will reorganize the old programming, and in so doing, it will remove the neurological evidence of that past experience. (Think of how a bigger wave breaking farther up on the beach erases any sign of whatever shell, seaweed, sea foam, or sand pattern was there before.) Strong emotional experiences create long-term memories. So this new internal experience creates new long-term memories that override our past

That narrow stretch of sand knows nothing in the world better than it does the white waves that whip it , caress it , collapse on to it . The white foam knows nothing better than those sands which wait for it , rise to it and suck it in .but what do the waves know of the massed, hot, still sands of the desert just twenty , no , ten feet beyond the scalloped edge ? And what does the beach knows of depths, the cold, the currents just there, where-do you see it? - Where the water turns a deeper blue.

Sea Longing" A thousand miles beyond this sun-steeped wall Somewhere the waves creep cool along the sand, The ebbing tide forsakes the listless land With the old murmur, long and musical; The windy waves mount up and curve and fall, And round the rocks the foam blows up like snow,-- Tho' I am inland far, I hear and know, For I was born the sea's eternal thrall. I would that I were there and over me The cold insistence of the tide would roll, Quenching this burning thing men call the soul,-- Then with the ebbing I should drift and be Less than the smallest shell along the shoal, Less than the sea-gulls calling to the sea.

I'm comming to You. You are blazing. I'm giving You a rose. It embalms sweet. I'm givin a kiss... I melt of You. I melt and flow with You. Like an ice in a spring river. I melt and stay. Sun will vaporise us. It will take us up into clouds. And then we both will fall. Drop by drop. We'll fall out of the sky. We'll raise from dew to fog. Every sunny warm morning. We'll let the wind pull us with him. Cooling our selves in forest shadows. There in silence we'll cool off One from another. But in stormy days and nights. We'll billow and crash. One to another. Like crazy and wild. We'll churn into white foam. Ashore in sands we'll wait For the yellow october leaves Into them we'll fall asleep. We'll fall into and freeze. We'll freeze and melt again And flow and raise and fall again. Over and over again Even if we were in separete glasses of water. We would moove together and whisper. Even if in the oceans mixed. We would moove together and sing. I'm comming to You. You are blazing. I'm giving You a rose It embalms sweet. ... If I'll ever meet You. I' ll take our time... To dance dance dance dance with You...

There fared a mother driven forth Out of an inn to roam; In the place where she was homeless All men are at home. The crazy stable close at hand, With shaking timber and shifting sand, Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand Than the square stones of Rome. For men are homesick in their homes, And strangers under the sun, And they lay on their heads in a foreign land Whenever the day is done. Here we have battle and blazing eyes, And chance and honour and high surprise, But our homes are under miraculous skies Where the yule tale was begun. A Child in a foul stable, Where the beasts feed and foam; Only where He was homeless Are you and I at home; We have hands that fashion and heads that know, But our hearts we lost - how long ago! In a place no chart nor ship can show Under the sky's dome. This world is wild as an old wives' tale, And strange the plain things are, The earth is enough and the air is enough For our wonder and our war; But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings And our peace is put in impossible things Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings Round an incredible star. To an open house in the evening Home shall men come, To an older place than Eden And a taller town than Rome. To the end of the way of the wandering star, To the things that cannot be and that are, To the place where God was homeless And all men are at home.

There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before. Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York--every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler's thumb. At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby's enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors-d'oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from another. By seven o'clock the orchestra has arrived, no thin five-piece affair, but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos, and low and high drums. The last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing up-stairs; the cars from New York are parked five deep in the drive, and already the halls and salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colors, and hair shorn in strange new ways, and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names. The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the centre of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light. Suddenly one of the gypsies, in trembling opal, seizes a cocktail out of the air, dumps it down for courage and, moving her hands like Frisco, dances out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary hush; the orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her, and there is a burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda Gray's understudy from the FOLLIES. The party has begun.

There was a feeling of freshness and vigour in the very streets; and when I got free of the town, when my foot was on the sands and my face towards the broad, bright bay, no language can describe the effect of the deep, clear azure of the sky and ocean, the bright morning sunshine on the semicircular barrier of craggy cliffs surmounted by green swelling hills, and on the smooth, wide sands, and the low rocks out at sea—looking, with their clothing of weeds and moss, like little grass–grown islands—and above all, on the brilliant, sparkling waves. And then, the unspeakable purity—and freshness of the air! There was just enough heat to enhance the value of the breeze, and just enough wind to keep the whole sea in motion, to make the waves come bounding to the shore, foaming and sparkling, as if wild with glee. Nothing else was stirring—no living creature was visible besides myself. My footsteps were the first to press the firm, unbroken sands;—nothing before had trampled them since last night’s flowing tide had obliterated the deepest marks of yesterday, and left them fair and even, except where the subsiding water had left behind it the traces of dimpled pools and little running streams.

Doc was collecting marine animals in the Great Tide Pool on the tip of the Peninsula. It is a fabulous place: when the tide is in, a wave-churned basin, creamy with foam, whipped by the combers that roll in from the whistling buoy on the reef. But when the tide goes out the little water world becomes quiet and lovely. The sea is very clear and the bottom becomes fantastic with hurrying, fighting, feeding, breeding animals. Crabs rush from frond to frond of the waving algae. Starfish squat over mussels and limpets, attach their million little suckers and then slowly lift with incredible power until the prey is broken from the rock. And then the starfish stomach comes out and envelops its food. Orange and speckled and fluted nudibranchs slide gracefully over the rocks, their skirts waving like the dresses of Spanish dancers. And black eels poke their heads out of crevices and wait for prey. The snapping shrimps with their trigger claws pop loudly. The lovely, colored world is glassed over. Hermit crabs like frantic children scamper on the bottom sand. And now one, finding an empty snail shell he likes better than his own, creeps out, exposing his soft body to the enemy for a moment, and then pops into the new shell. A wave breaks over the barrier, and churns the glassy water for a moment and mixes bubbles into the pool, and then it clears and is tranquil and lovely and murderous again. Here a crab tears a leg from his brother. The anemones expand like soft and brilliant flowers, inviting any tired and perplexed animal to lie for a moment in their arms, and when some small crab or little tide-pool Johnnie accepts the green and purple invitation, the petals whip in, the stinging cells shoot tiny narcotic needles into the prey and it grows weak and perhaps sleepy while the searing caustic digestive acids melt its body down. Then the creeping murderer, the octopus, steals out, slowly, softly, moving like a gray mist, pretending now to be a bit of weed, now a rock, now a lump of decaying meat while its evil goat eyes watch coldly. It oozes and flows toward a feeding crab, and as it comes close its yellow eyes burn and its body turns rosy with the pulsing color of anticipation and rage. Then suddenly it runs lightly on the tips of its arms, as ferociously as a charging cat. It leaps savagely on the crab, there is a puff of black fluid, and the struggling mass is obscured in the sepia cloud while the octopus murders the crab. On the exposed rocks out of water, the barnacles bubble behind their closed doors and the limpets dry out. And down to the rocks come the black flies to eat anything they can find. The sharp smell of iodine from the algae, and the lime smell of calcareous bodies and the smell of powerful protean, smell of sperm and ova fill the air. On the exposed rocks the starfish emit semen and eggs from between their rays. The smells of life and richness, of death and digestion, of decay and birth, burden the air. And salt spray blows in from the barrier where the ocean waits for its rising-tide strength to permit it back into the Great Tide Pool again. And on the reef the whistling buoy bellows like a sad and patient bull.

Where are your monuments, your battles, martyrs? Where is your tribal memory? Sirs, in that gray vault. The sea. The sea has locked them up. The sea is History. First, there was the heaving oil, heavy as chaos; then, likea light at the end of a tunnel, the lantern of a caravel, and that was Genesis. Then there were the packed cries, the shit, the moaning: Exodus. Bone soldered by coral to bone, mosaics mantled by the benediction of the shark's shadow, that was the Ark of the Covenant. Then came from the plucked wires of sunlight on the sea floor the plangent harp of the Babylonian bondage, as the white cowries clustered like manacles on the drowned women, and those were the ivory bracelets of the Song of Solomon, but the ocean kept turning blank pages looking for History. Then came the men with eyes heavy as anchors who sank without tombs, brigands who barbecued cattle, leaving their charred ribs like palm leaves on the shore, then the foaming, rabid maw of the tidal wave swallowing Port Royal, and that was Jonah, but where is your Renaissance? Sir, it is locked in them sea sands out there past the reef's moiling shelf, where the men-o'-war floated down; strop on these goggles, I'll guide you there myself. It's all subtle and submarine, through colonnades of coral, past the gothic windows of sea fans to where the crusty grouper, onyx-eyed, blinks, weighted by its jewels, like a bald queen; and these groined caves with barnacles pitted like stone are our cathedrals, and the furnace before the hurricanes: Gomorrah. Bones ground by windmills into marl and cornmeal, and that was Lamentations - that was just Lamentations, it was not History; then came, like scum on the river's drying lip, the brown reeds of villages mantling and congealing into towns, and at evening, the midges' choirs, and above them, the spires lancing the side of God as His son set, and that was the New Testament. Then came the white sisters clapping to the waves' progress, and that was Emancipation - jubilation, O jubilation - vanishing swiftly as the sea's lace dries in the sun, but that was not History, that was only faith, and then each rock broke into its own nation; then came the synod of flies, then came the secretarial heron, then came the bullfrog bellowing for a vote, fireflies with bright ideas and bats like jetting ambassadors and the mantis, like khaki police, and the furred caterpillars of judges examining each case closely, and then in the dark ears of ferns and in the salt chuckle of rocks with their sea pools, there was the sound like a rumour without any echo of History, really beginning.