Unit 1: Selection Vocabulary 1

Our little town does not lie on the frontier, nowhere near; it is so far from the frontier, in fact, that perhaps no one from our little town has ever been there; desolate highlands have to be crossed as well as wide fertile plains.

The soldiers speak a dialect utterly incomprehensible to us, and they can hardly get used to ours—all of which produces a certain shut-off, unapproachable quality corresponding, as it happens, to their character, for they are silent, serious, and rigid.

Not that he breathed with difficulty, it was just that he breathed so conspicuously, much as frogs breathe—except that with them it is normal, while here it was exceptional.

“The petition has been refused,” he announced.

Indeed, it does happen now and again that minor petitions are granted, but then it invariably looks as though the colonel had done it as a powerful private person on his own responsibility, and it had to be kept all but a secret from the government—not explicitly of course, but that is what it feels like.

Keep it, treasure this as you would
if you were lost, needing direction
in the wilderness life becomes when mature

Keep it, treasure this as you would
if you were lost, needing direction
in the wilderness life becomes when mature

and in the corner of your drawer,
tucked away like a cabin or hogan
in dense trees, come knocking,
and I will answer, give you directions

and in the corner of your drawer,
tucked away like a cabin or hogan
in dense trees, come knocking,
and I will answer, give you directions

Whales and dolphins, seals and sea otters consented with particular grace and alacrity, sliding into anonymity as into their element.

The cats, of course, steadfastly denied ever having had any name other than those self-given, unspoken, ineffably personal names which, as the poet Eliot said, they spend long hours daily contemplating...

The insects parted with their names in vast clouds and swarms of ephemeral syllables buzzing and stinging and humming and flitting and crawling and tunneling away.

I resolutely put anxiety away, went to Adam, and said, “You and your father lent me this—gave it to me, actually..."

It is hard to give back a gift without sounding peevish or ungrateful, and I did not want to leave him with that impression of me.