Days Without End

by Sebastian Barry

The mind is a wild liar and I don’t trust much in it that I find there.

It is as if we have stopped the human clock of the village, that’s what I were thinking. The hands have stuck and the hours will be no more.

Some of those native-born soldiers fear the goddamn Irish since in a bad mood they might knock you down and stomp on your head till they feel better but you won’t.

I don’t guess I have met two hundred souls in my time and knew their names. Souls ain’t like a great river and then when death comes the souls pouring over the waterfall and into the bottom land below. Souls ain’t like that but this war is asking for them to be. Do we got so many souls to be given? How can that be?