first page of Grimus

Go, go, go, said the bird; human kind
Cannot bear very much reality

(T.S. Eliot)

Come, you lost atoms, to your Centre Draw,
And be the Eternal Mirror that you saw;
Rays that have wandered into darkness wide,
Return, and back into your sun subside.

(FARID-U-Din' ATTAR,
The Conference of Birds, trans. Fitzgerald)

Crow straggled, limply bedraggled his remnant.
He was his own leftover, the spat-out Scrag
He was what his brain could make nothing of.

(TED HUGHES,
Crow's Playmates)

The sands of Time are steeped in new Beginnings.

(IGNATIUS Q. GRIBB,
The All-Purpose Quotable Philosophy)

- First page of Grimus by Salman Rushdie.