Dedication You shudder — and a mountain' off Of the mind, and the soul' up. O, cliffs of my grief, don't you scoff At my mountain chant. This black hole will yawn unsealed Forevermore. My cliffsome grief, let me sing At the mountaintop. I. That mountain was like a recruit's Bosom overtopping the battlefield. That mountain wouldn't excuse Kissing outside of the sacrament. That mountain wished to insert An ocean into the auricle. With a sudden "hurray!", it would burst, All belligerent and inexorable...

On the third day of rain they had killed so many crabs inside the house that Pelayo had to cross his drenched courtyard and throw them into the sea, because the newborn child had a temperature all night and they thought it was due to the stench. The world had been sad since Tuesday. Sea and sky were a single ash-gray thing and the sands of the beach, which on March nights glimmered like powdered light, had become a stew of mud and rotten shellfish. The light was so weak at noon that when Pelayo was...