Awakening to the Great Sleep War

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In the morning, that city is usually enveloped by a low-lying cloud, from which it slowly and with great difficulty extricates itself, and depending on the varying requirements of the day, it ascends at least three or five meters, yes, even as high as seven or nine meters up the air-arena stairwell, into the sublime midmorning.

By noon, however, this dignified stance has already become too uncomfortable for it, so it drifts surreptitiously down to its customary altitude, so that, once there, it can lean back into the comfortable afternoon, over the course of which it will of course still have to put up with just about everything imaginable, till long into the evening, when it pulls the evening’s gray pelt up over its ears before sinking further down, several meters, crumbling away through the porous, moth-eaten skin of the plains, as if its houses were being suctioned away, so that only the pointed tops of a few chimney toques still peep out, only the wings of a few helplessly fluttering rooftops still sail swaying over the spring tides of twilight — it has fallen in on itself, leaving deep furrows, and there is a barely audible rustling sound as the city slips away from the eye of the beholder, glittering as it goes.

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