Emily

I said it with disdain—like I didn't have to be embarrassed or make up something nice, because Veronica was nobody—like why should I care if an ant could see up my dress? Except I didn't notice my disdain; it was habitual by then. She noticed it, though.

Most of them don't have good bodies, but they are looking at the camera like they are happy to be naked, either just standing there or posing in the combination of relaxation and sexual nastiness that people had then. They all look like people whose time had given them a perfect style suit to wear: a set of postures and expressions that gave the right shape to what they had inside them, so that even naked, they felt clothed.



[...]



There is always a style suit, or suits. When I was young, I used to think these suits were just what people were. When styles changed dramatically—people going barefoot, men with long hair, women without bras—I thought the world had changed, that from then on everything would be different. It's understandable that I thought that; TV and newsmagazines acted like the world had changed, too. I was happy with it, but then five years later it changed again.

GOD'S GRANDEUR



The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

   It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

   It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

   And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

   And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.



And, for all this, nature is never spent;

   There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

   Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastwards, springs—

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

                  Praise him.

THE SEA AND THE SKYLARK



On ear and ear two noises too old to end

   Trench—right, the tide that ramps against the shore;

   With a flood or a fall, low lull-off or all roar;

Frequenting there while moon shall wear and wend.



Left hand, off land, I hear the lark ascend,

   His rash-fresh re-winded new-skeinèd score

   In crisps of curl off wild winch whirl, and pour

And pelt music, till none's to spill nor spend.



How these two shame this shallow and frail town!

   How ring right out our sordid turbid time,

Being pure! We, life's pride and cared-for crown,



   Have lost that cheer and charm of earth's past prime;

Our make and making break, are breaking, down

   To man's last dust, drain fast towards man's first slime.