Bath

Bath


A man saw the whole world as a grinning skull and cross-bones. The rose flesh of life
shriveled from all faces. Nothing counts. Everything is a fake. Dust to dust and ashes
to ashes and then an old darkness and a useless silence. So he saw it all. Then he went
to a Mischa Elman concert. Two hours waves of sound beat on his eardrums. Music
washed something or other inside him. Music broke down and rebuilt something or
other in his head and heart. He joined in five encores for the young Russian Jew with
the fiddle. When he got outside his heels hit the sidewalk a new way. He was the same
man in the same world as before. Only there was a singing fire and a climb of roses
everlastingly over the world he looked on.