All the Same

[rejectomorph]

Languor is like fitful sleep in a boat adrift, following the slow current of a sluggish stream. The shore's sounds will at times intrude, but always pass unmoved. Languor is not still, but moves the way a dreamer sometimes moves, approaching something sought but never reaching it.

Some days are all languor and dissatisfaction. Hours pass, the world a vague background to the slow clock's heavy hands. You wait to wake, unable to rouse yourself by will, half enjoying the lassitude, half wishing something would happen to end it.

Languor is ambiguous, like muffled voices speaking words that might be threatening or might be affectionate— but you only come to care once you've left the half-dream and find yourself in a silent place far downstream and wonder what has passed as you drifted, and know you can never return.




Sunday Verse

Before the World Was Made

by William Butler Yeats


If I make the lashes dark
And the eyes more bright
And the lips more scarlet,
Or ask if all be right
From mirror after mirror,
No vanity's displayed:
I'm looking for the face I had
Before the world was made.

What if I look upon a man
As though on my beloved,
And my blood be cold the while
And my heart unmoved?
Why should he think me cruel
Or that he is betrayed?
I'd have him love the thing that was
Before the world was made.