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Quote by W.H. Auden

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The Enchafèd Flood: or, The Romantic Iconography of the Sea

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W.H. Auden

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“Maybe its like you said before, all of us being cracked open. Like each of us starts out as a watertight vessel. And then things happen - these people leave us, or don’t love us, or don’t get us, or we don’t get them, and we lose and fail and hurt one another. And the vessel starts to crack in places. And I mean, yeah once the vessel cracks open, the end becomes inevitable. Once it starts to rain inside the Osprey, it will never be remodeled. But there is all this time between when the cracks start to open up and when we finally fall apart. And its only that time that we see one another, because we see out of ourselves through our cracks and into others through theirs. When did we see each other face to face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. Before that we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade, but never seeing inside. But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out.”

“Beauty in Decay! . . I cannot rest easy in the rush of the hour, where voices echo sharp as machines, and the headlines knit a web of ash, steel, and sorrow. Last evening, in a restful orchard, I found an old tree split by storms. Its hollow cradling a single blossom, pale and trembling in the dusk. I left it untouched, its fragile defiance far brighter than the glow of any city's burning light.”

“Stupendous carnage was painted on the canvas, A depiction of repulsion was executed around the structure. It revealed its dark emblem by painting its sinister Red. Three intertwined bloated eyes are encrusted together, awfully deformed - the horrendous stench of decay can be smelt from it, for it exudes a sulfurous aroma of rotting animals. A torn torso of a butchered rabbit laid on the eye sockets, with all its arms, legs, and head severed off. A sludge-like, bubbling, dripping fluid oozed from the abnormally large eyes, leaving the ground deserted to rust and becoming the midst of a terrible famine. Blood Gushes from the slashes of each hideous eye, gouging out gore from the torn skin, spluttering and erupting gasping cries as it struggles in its own twisted misery of giving birth, as it was preparing to give shape-shifting life to a black-glass body, horn-like entity, unlike any childbirth you have ever witnessed. Satanic was this creature, whose muscle mass was disintegrated. All of his blood was squeezed out, forlorn and cold to the touch. The thorns on his head were intertwined into horns. A serpent's nose and wolf-like fangs were all this child had, as he had no gift of sight or hearing, he had only the smell of terror as his power.”

“One last Unseen entities possessed my mind in the chaos of their worship. Created by the heathen ancestors, deceased objects by otherworldy divinities provide comfort in my psyche. The whirlwind of its carnage gives me a hymn to lament for. The sun is my Deity, and I enjoy watching the world scorch while worshipping it. I am like a deity without a God because the universe is a pleasure in my thoughts. The only way I can experience life is through an illusion, such as being like a divine being, which molds and forsakes any belief in oneself in the absence of a God.”