THE STRANGE WOMAN WITH THE HONEYCOMB LIPS* At the nose of a dog and under her knees there hung a little bell made all of glass. Her lips and hips were heaped together and the midden steamed with its own itch. She sat at her door between two stools while a drowning boy clutched at her straws, bawling hard words to scatter her bones: but fair and softly had gone too far. She lifted her elbow high and dry and a manikin leapt within her bag, crying cold pudding to settle his love; but she gave him the breast that snapped his liver. And while she laughed herself half naked he clawed the wink out of her eye: and while a snake slip into her hand a key was freezing against his leg. Then truth came swiftly between wind and water and the end and the beginning were the first day.________________________
* After Proverbs v.
(1940)