Peach Tree Grove

     Do not trust the old woman dressed in black.      The woman who waits in the station and appears in the alley just when you are at your most vulnerable. The woman who walks down the streets in heavy black clothes with only her face and her hands uncovered. That face is lined and wrinkled, but it does not sag. It is full of wicked sharpness: her nose the nose of the old nobility, her eyebrows arched with unfaded fierceness. A round black hat with a narrow brim sits immovable on her gray head, untouched by the wind that billows her skirts and her shawl as she strides up the street.      If you ever see this woman do not look at her, they said. Do not look at her, hurry away in the opposite direction as quickly as you can. She is shameful and she will show you no mercy if you fall into her clutches; all she knows is an old, old hate. That was what they told her.      Bread was extended to her by a strong, wrinkled hand. She s...

       Glittering halos ring round their heads. Some are diamond and some are stone, harder and heavier even than hands weighed with blood and boldness to wreck man’s image.      Diamonds know no death; they know nothing but dust and coal and cold, then pain and pressure and light and laughter. Diamonds know no death, and they may sit on heads of stone pure and purifying. Diamonds know no death, and it is they who pierce the stone.  Rock cracks and crumbles and the christened fall, but the christened know this heat well, this rolling fire full-folded in liquid gold grace. They do not fear it, they love it, and it receives them rippling like soft silk. Stone crumbles to steam and nothing is left but the ever-rolling fire, glittering with a thousand rings of calm, cool relief, the christened thrown safe into the furnace.