28
Disillusion
Oceano
Leone made fewer trips to the Dunes. She kept to herself in the hut, making no attempt at home improvements. The first copy of Dune Forum sat on the table next to typewriter. When she blanked while writing, she would turn to the poetry section in the magazine and stare at the page.
Symphony of Water
by Leone Barry
It lies there ...
As a brown hurting giant,
With the features of it
Thrust and sharp and static.
It is the thing between
An asking and an answer.
It is the shore....
The eye of a star is flashing us.
We are wailing, washing, wishing.
We are water.
O, waves that reach and waves that twist,
O, strange far promise of a fire....
It could be the last deceit.
It can last as long as night.
O, silver burning, silver eye....
Sing, you forms of foam.
We have toiled in blue deepness
And you are more than our dreams,
Careless and white,
Fading on the tide.
We are beauty.
We have mated with the sun
And our children lie
As young golden lights
Along our power.
A strangeness is with us.
It trembles to us.
It asks, it tells.
Shall we hate it with our storm,
Shall we love it with our peace?
Shall we....
O, straining, certain, sinking sea,
O, things that have been and will be....
Mother, mother,
Nestle us.
We fear the things we are.
We fear the things we do.
We do not understand.
Our laughter lives and dies.
Our sorrow lives on
And in and on.
Things fall to us.
And we to them.
And we wonder, wonder.
We would be soft and sweet
And satin on your breast.
Mother, nestle us.
Father, we have broken our brother....
It has become the terrible shine,
The shining terror
Of our motion.
Father....
A greatness has entered us.
It is almost a sound.
And yet....
Be still.
It is the voice of us,
So sighing, sobbing, singing,
That we have not known it as our own.
“We are going, we must go.
We are going. We must go.”
Knowledge breaks.
We gather the things that we are.
And we are tears, and we are dew,
And we are rain, and we are sweat.
We are every running river,
We are every soaring sea.
We belong, we belong....
O, blood of every sorrow
Beating, beating.
O, blood of every joy
Racing, racing.
We are wailing, washing, wishing.
We are water.
It lies there....
It knew our going,
It knows our coming.
And it waits,
With open, splendid arms.
We move .. .
Our life beats us on
In blue and green
And great final gray.
We kill
As we rise and rush.
We die
As we flash and fall.
We live
As we go on and on and on....
O, star beyond our reach,
O, pain beyond our soul.
It lies there ...
We break and writhe
And fade upon it.
It is the thing between
An asking and an answer.
It is the shore....
Would she ever be able to write something so beautiful again? She turned back a few pages and reread her credit.
LEONE BARRY lives not far from the Dunes in a little hut perched on a cliff where she is writing a novel of great promise. She is twenty-three, and the DUNE FORUM banks on the fact that one day she will be known to all the reading world.
Gavin made that up. He knew nothing of what she was writing. Still, it was good of him to publish her poem. The first issue had attracted much attention and submissions from well-known poets piled up on his desk. She glared at the empty paper in her typewriter.
The old hermit’s words had stayed with her. She had always thought of lack as the absence of something you needed or wanted, but he seemed to be addressing some universal character deficiency. She stood up from the table, water glass in hand. In the few steps it took her to get from the table to the washstand basin, the glass slipped from her grasp and shattered on the rough wood floor. Earlier in the day, she’d dropped and broken her coffee mug. Not only did she lack imagination for the morning’s work, she also seemed to lack the ability to hold onto cups and glasses.
Leone swept up the broken glass and tossed it into the garbage alongside the brown pottery shards. Perhaps a walk down the winding dirt path and a visit to the thrift shop would lift her spirits.
Halfway to town, she spotted something shiny nestled in coastal buckwheat and deep-pink verbena. Stepping off the path, she bent down to investigate and pulled a dented tin cup from the bristle of foliage. Tossed aside by a hobo; it would do. By the time she returned to the hut, she was breathing hard from the uphill exertion. She dropped into her chair at the table and set the cup in front of her. Round with a broad handle, it looked like the cups soldiers used in movies she’d seen. She stared at it. Stained and dirty. Empty. What had the hermit said? Something about magic A prayer formed on her lips. Fill my cup with magic.
Voices outside jolted her from her reverie. No one ever came to the hut. She looked out the window and then threw open the door. Two young women leaned on each other, panting.
“How did you find me?”
“Good God, Leone, whatever possessed you to live up here?” Rosemary pushed through the doorway.
“We’re on a little holiday. We thought we’d look you up.” Rosemary’s companion followed.
“How did you find me?” Leone stepped aside. The room soon filled with chatter that had become unfamiliar to her.
“We bandied your name about town. We should have asked how far up the trail you were. We had to park the car and leave it.”
“Do you have any water?” Rosemary’s friend gasped and held her side. “Oh boy, I must be out of shape.”
Leone washed out the tin cup and filled it from a stone jug with a train painted on the front. While her friend downed the cup of water, Rosemary swigged directly from the jug and set it back down. “Before I forget, I have a message for you. Your mother called the Studio Club asking for you. She didn’t seem to know you’d left LA.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That I would give you the message.”
“What did she want?”
“She wanted you to know that they have moved to San Francisco.”
Rosemary’s companion refreshed the tin cup, dipped her fingers into the water, and patted her forehead and cheeks. “Whew.”
“Who’s your friend?” Leone narrowed her eyes at Rosemary.
“Sorry, thought you’d remember. Evelyn moved into the club just before you left. But listen, your grandmother is still in Portland, and I guess she’s not doing well.”
“Hey,” Evelyn barged in. “What say we all walk back down to the car and drive out to the Dunes. I’m dying to see Moy Mell. I hear the parties out there last for days.” She looked around the room. “Where’s the bathroom?”
Leone opened the front door and pointed toward a small grove of eucalyptus trees.
“You’re kidding.”
“Watch out for the poison oak.”
While the two women were gone, Leone packed up her typewriter and a valise of clothing. Before she zipped the bag, she shoved the tin cup inside. Shutting the door behind her, she fell in step with her friends as they walked past the hut. Rosemary eyed the valise and typewriter case. “Going somewhere?”
“I’ll show you around the Dunes. After that, I’m going to try to talk you into driving me up to Portland.”