"Tony Daniel - Life on the Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Daniel Tony)

Life on the Moon
a short story by Tony Daniel
The Big Empty by Henry Colterman
If I ventured into the Big Empty,
a smaller movement between hard and fast stars,
if I ventured to the moon, and the dust of the moon,
and to those smooth ceramic halls, those lustrous and benign
spaces,
or to the evaporated surface,
the empty mineral stretch and score,
would I find you?
Are you still in the valence between spaces? I would kiss the
fall of your hair; I would lie
beside you in the silence,
and trace with my fingertip your lips' surge and fall.
I would pull you gently from the undermass,
the crystal and stone, like a spiderweb from foliage, like breath
from a sleeper.
If I ventured to the Big Empty,
I would never stop looking for you, Nell.



Nell was skinny and wan. Her hair was brown, darkening to black,
and her eyes were brown and sad. Henry did not understand why he
loved her, for he had always considered himself a shallow man when it
came down to it, with a head turned by shallow beauty and flashy
teeth and eyes. Nell was a calm, dark pool. She was also probably
the greatest artist of her generation, though, and when one had the
extraordinary luck to claim such a woman's regard, one made
exceptions.

They met at a faculty mixer in St. Louis. Henry was a visiting poet at
Washington University's graduate writing program. Nell, already quite
famous in her professional circles, had given a lecture that day at the
architecture school-- a lecture that Henry had studiously avoided. Nell
had not read any of Henry's poetry, for that matter, but few people
had. If anything, twenty-first century poets were more obscure and
unknown than their predecessors had been.

But both knew the other by reputation, and, being the only people at
the mixer who were not involved in the intricacies of academic policy
skirmishes, the two of them ended up in a corner, talking about
corners.

"Why do they have to be ninety degrees," Henry asked. He leaned
against one wall, trying to appear nonchalant, and felt his drink slosh
over his wrist. For the first time, Henry regretted that he was not a
man brought up to be comfortable on the insides of buildings.