in Autumn the paths across the formal lawn near the library hum with distant sounds of sunlight conversations and slow bees already weakened by the succession of cold nights and slowly warming mornings, clover and timothy tattered and done, poplar jaundiced and sighing in its low branches leather leaves around its massive trunk; and in the delta at the crook of two paths an autumnal scarlet shrub, pubic, placed there for this purpose, the annual show of this last song, suggests the sweetness of pain at the end, spiky soft symmetrical cascade sharp conical fronds of pomegranate red knives lotus flower domesticated landscape ornamental scream. Marrow dulled with morphine yet bone raw and in pain beyond pain could the sleeper welcome even the confirming dream? Is the last thing she feels worth feeling at all? Is one awful feeling worth innumerable past feelings? Is this saying the same thing? Will we cling to anything? Witnesses look on. The procession passes to the chapel, wide sleeves and hoods flapping in a lately sprung breeze, chatting softly laughing, flutter of satin and fur, the plump velvet hats of dottore like caterpillars’ low waddle on a dry October path. Infant in a blue corduroy dress propped in a stroller, pacifier on a velvet ribbon. Inside the stone chapel the bright chords of Meyerbeer’s march on the organ. Inside the awful pain. The prophets enter in. The red shrub stands witness to feeling.