"Sheri S. Tepper - Grass" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tepper Sherri)

GRASS

by Sheri S. Tepper



[05 jul 2001 тАУ scanned, proofed and released for #bookz]



A voice says, "Cry!"

And I said, "What shall I cry?'

All flesh is grass....

Isaiah 40-6



Grass!

Millions of square miles of it; numberless wind-whipped tsunamis of grass, a thousand sun-lulled
caribbeans of grass, a hundred rippling oceans, every ripple a gleam of scarlet or amber, emerald or
turquoise, multicolored as rainbows, the colors shivering over the prairies in stripes and blotches, the
grassesтАФsome high, some low, some feath-ered, some straightтАФmaking their own geography as they
grow. There are grass hills where the great plumes tower in masses the height of ten tall men; grass
valleys where the turf is like moss, soft under the feet, where maidens pillow their heads thinking of their
lovers, where husbands lie down and think of their mistresses; grass groves where old men and women
sit quiet at the end of the day, dreaming of things that might have been, perhaps once were. Commoners
all, of course. No aristocrat would sit in the wild grass to dream. Aristocrats have gardens for that, if they
dream at all.

Grass. Ruby ridges, blood-colored highlands, wine-shaded glades. Sapphire seas of grass with dark
islands of grass bearing great plumy green trees which are grass again. Interminable meadows of silver
hay where the great grazing beasts move in slanted lines like mowing machines, leaving the stubble behind
them to spring up again in trackless wildernesses of rippling argent.

Orange highlands burning against the sunsets. Apricot ranges glowing in the dawns. Seed plumes
sparkling like sequin stars. Blos-som heads like the fragile lace old women take out of trunks to show
their granddaughters.

"Lace made by nuns in the long-ago time."

"What are nuns, Grandma?"

Here, there, wide-scattered across the limitless veldts, are the vil-lages, walled about to keep the grass
at bay, with small, thick-walled houses, each with its stout doors and heavy shutters. The minuscule fields
and tiny orchards are full of homely crops and familiar fruits, while outside the walls the grass hovers like
some enormous planet-wide bird, ready to stoop across the wall and eat it all, every apple and every