124 The Meadow A Whispering World Sergey Gerasimov The afternoon path whispers when it thinks you don’t hear. It whispers, talking to the wilted grasses, rowan trees, dog roses, a long-legged fox nervously smelling the empty air, to all the descendants of tiny bubbles that used to swirl in the primordial broth, that still realize they are brothers, sisters, parts of the current. But not to you, man made of salt, plodding your way across the current. Please, stop here. There’s no need to hurry. The pig-hoofed time will lick you off with its wet invisible tongue all the same. Everything you’ve managed to do will become indistinguishable from the innumerable things you’ve never succeeded in doing, and from many more things you’ve failed to notice. You’d better dissolve in this. Close your eyes: you are in a forest of sounds. It grows out of silence, which is quieter than silence, and it’s not at all disturbed by the faraway barking of dogs, by the rhythmic thumping of music in an uphill village, or laughter of a jolly company beyond the river, that rings like sounds of lepers’ bells.
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