Hand

    Clouds darken the plain.
From all sides, the mountains of the horizon move forward; the plain shrinks, crumpled into valleys that grow deeper.  The three rivers become torrents that flow swiftly in their cavernous beds towards those dark spots where they meet: the cities.
    Then the sun again.
    The mountains move back to the distant circular horizon; the valleys disappear, and the three rivers flow placidly in their scarcely perceptible beds of luminous sands.  The cities glisten with their crystal walls and the hard light is reflected from house to house along the glass streets.  Men no longer drag their dark-blue shadows like long chains that rattled on the opaque cobble stones.  Silence of light: frozen wines of sound.  No wind stirs, sleepily coiled around the towers that are transparent stems bearing the white flowers of clouds which float, vehicles for our pure thoughts, like water-lilies on the surface of a stream until they fade into the blue depth of space.