ou, Cochrane, what city sent for him? -Tarentum, sir.
-Very good. Well?
-There was a battle, sir.
-Very good. Where?
The boy’s blank face asked the blank window.
Fabled by the daughters of memory. And yet it was in some way if not
as memory fabled it. A phrase, then, of impatience, thud of Blake’s wings of excess. I hear the ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry, and time one livid final flame. What’s left us then?
-I forget the place, sir. 2.79 B. C.
-Asculum, Stephen said, glancing at the name and date in the gorescarred book.
-Y es, sir. And he said: Another victory like that and we are done for.
That phrase the world had remembered. A dull ease of the mind. From a hill above a corpsestrewn plain a general speaking to his officers, leaned upon his spear. Any general to any officers. They lend ear.
-Y ou, Armstrong, Stephen said.