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through the trip wired minefield hand in hand eyes for nothing but ourselves alone undaunted by the traps & pits of wasted land until you stoop & pluck a stem of eyebright
From On the Night Watch by Ciaran Carson. Copyright © 2010 by Ciaran Carson. Used by permission of Wake Forest University Press.
I think I must have told him my name was Juliette, with four syllables, you said, to go with violette. I envisaged the violet air that presages snow, the dark campaniles of a city beginning to blur a malfunctioning violet neon pharmacy sign jittering away all night through the dimity curtains. Near dawn you opened them to a deep fall and discovered a line of solitary footprints leading to a porch: a smell of candle-wax and frankincense; the dim murmur of a liturgy you knew but whose language you did not. The statues were shrouded in Lenten violet, save one, a Virgin in a cop
hurtling from the airport down the mountain road past barbed wire snagged with plastic bags fields of scrap and thistle farmyards from the edge of the plateau my eye zooms into the clarity of Belfast streets shipyards domes theatres British Army helicopter poised motionless at last I see everything
I fear the vast dimensions of eternity. I fear the gap between the platform and the train. I fear the onset of a murderous campaign. I fear the palpitations caused by too much tea. I fear the drawn pistol of a rapparee. I fear the books will not survive the acid rain. I fear the ruler and the blackboard and the cane. I fear the Jabberwock, whatever it might be. I fear the bad decisions of a referee. I fear the only recourse is to plead insane. I fear the implications of a lawyer’s fee. I fear the gremlins that have colonized my brain. I fear to read the small print of the guarantee. A