DEDICATION PORTRAIT. of your being here. The lights deepened by gay awnings rest aimlessly with drooping arms on wide white armchairs. The ringing of bells draws faint echoes from the well-dressed sides of the chaina, nestling in leaves. In the winter the lakes of your country reflect thin flames, the fingers of trees touch lightly your white and blue fabrics. The brown fields of restrained laughter are dotted with the white teeth of the snow. Over your plains fly birds . unexpected . . You assort the days and the nights in your cabinets with languid intelligence. Improbably you touch the old beard of Truth until the unwilling mouth grows eloquent. Little do you know or care to know of his past. You have seen too many torrents disappear, you have seen too much smoke ascend . . . You know better than any one the irregular ways of your desire you would have no new architect in the narrow streets, with their crooked little boxes, where grow the flowers of destiny. No less than wine are you made of imagination. What can the sun do but ripen you who have no desire for ripening. Distillation shall follow distillation and in the end you shall be tasted by wind and shadow by the slow look of exiles. Pleasure is essential. . . quot. . . Can you not figure to yourself the folly of other peoplequot When I stand here looking down at the polished ribbon of the river you have crossed for the last time, I do not know that I am unwilling to drop all the petals of reality. Three Plays in Chiaroscuro SHADOW ECLIPSE LUM1ERE To Grace . I 10 BLACK BRANCHES SHADOW A Play In One Act The three old sisters are faded and exquisite. The frst sister, with a palette and brush, stands before an easel The second sister lies motionless on a couch, draped over with gray. The third sister is seated on a wide chair behind the couch Her hands are folded in her lap. Behind the three sisters rises a very large, broad window. Beyond is a garden, indistinct in the still dusk. The Third Sister My hands I have folded and refolded jfor forty years. . . . My heart sings because it has no gestures. The First Sister We who have had this window know what it is to look with the eyes, hear with the ears, accept with the brain. The Third Sister We who have had these walls know what it is seeing, to be blind. . . . hearing, to be deaf. . . . accepting, to be dumb. The Second Sister BLACK BRANCHES I have baked five thousand and thirty loaves of bread. They pause for her to continue, and then The Third Sister That which we are not unproved in the meditation of, we dare not discuss in the intrusion of this inquisitive window. The First Sister I have been with abounding grace those things that are called aunt, cousin, grand aunt, daughter, grand daughter, niece, and sister. . . . I shall curtsey unto the first Father, and say quotdear relativequot The Third Sister Our property is in things that do not cry with pain, and are not silent through joy. 11 --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.