Fall of Light

Начало книги

So they lust for blood. Poets know its taste, but some know IT better than others. A few are known to choke on it. Stand at a distance, then, and make violence into a dance. Glory in its sounds, in the mayhem and those stern expressions that seem better suited to an unpleasant task completed with reluctant forbearance. There is for the audience that glee of admiration in the well-swung sword, the perfect thrust, the cold, professional face with the flat eyes. Revel, then, in the strut, and see something enticing in the grim camaraderie of failed men and women-

Failed? You say many do not see that? Oh dear.

Shall I then offer up the reek of shit and piss? The cries for loved ones far away? The hopeless longing for a mother’s embrace to ease the pain and the terror, to bless the gentle slowing of the hammering heart? Shall I describe the true faces of violence? The twist of fear, the heaviness of dread, the panic that rushes in a surge of blood, a surge that drains the visage and bulges the eyes? But what value any of this, when to feel is to acknowledge the frailty of one’s own soul, and such frailty must ever be denied in the public swagger that so many find essential, lest they lose grip.

Читать дальше →