duration

it is the week the hyacinths first purple. low walls of stone still cut sloppy fields, and an old cat strolls them again. they are gone now those who dreamed of sleeping at the tops of mountains and brinks of cliffs. void of people the earth slows imperceptibly, now three minutes from horizon to set instead of two. in dim air the cat falls. the cat too dreamt. of a blur, of flitting brown fur with vanishingly slender means of escape, and its own dreams, of inevitable missteps, of beginning being eaten.