First Of All An Osprey Sounds The Prelude,
Above My Head And So Close To Me That It Holds Me Trembling Throughout
Its Long Cry.
Then other voices answer from the depths of the ruins,
voices very diverse, but all sinister.
Some are only able to mew on
two long-drawn notes: some yelp like jackals round a cemetery, and
others again imitate the sound of a steel spring slowly unwinding
itself. And this concert comes always from above. Owls, ospreys,
screech-owls, all the different kinds of birds, with hooked beaks and
round eyes, and silken wings that enable them to fly noiselessly, have
their homes amongst the granites massively upheld in the air; and they
are celebrating now, each after its own fashion, the nocturnal
festival. Intermittent calls break upon the air, and long-drawn
infinitely mournful wailings, that sometimes swell and sometimes seem
to be strangled and end in a kind of sob. And then, in spite of the
sonority of the vast straight walls, in spite of the echoes which
prolong the cries, the silence obstinately returns. Silence. The
silence after all and beyond all doubt is the true master at this hour
of this kingdom at once colossal, motionless and blue - a silence that
seems to be infinite, because we know that there is nothing around
these ruins, nothing but the line of the dead sands, the threshold of
the deserts.
*****
I retrace my steps towards the west in the direction of the hypostyle,
traversing again the avenue of monstrous splendours, imprisoned and,
as it were, dwarfed between the rows of sovereign stones.
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