Ears Wide Open

It was evening. The air had become strangely audible. Far off in the hills, trees could be heard creaking and stretching. Grémone Forest seemed quite near; its foliage murmured like water bubbling out of the earth in great sombre spurts. There could be heard the sound, not only of the Ouvèze River, but of its entire valley with the song of all its little secondary valleys, the rustling of the reeds, the trot of the current over the gravel, and the rumbling of the road that followed all the windings of the water and over which, at this hour, marched the long caravans of carts loaded with rock from the quarries. Beyond Grémone Forest—and that must be far away at the foot of the slope—could be heard the buzzing of the slender steel wheel of a mechanical saw. Down in the plain a train whistled. A bird flew over La Jourdane. It came from the mountains. It was going down toward a broad country that it must already have see en from above. It was moving with great flappings of its wings. They could be heard in spite of the height at which it was flying. It flew over the orchard. The beating of its wings clacked in the echoes of the flowering trees. The rapid rolling of carts awoke the echoes of the poplar groves in the plains, and in the short moments of deepest silence could be heard coming from beyond more than twenty hills the dull roar of the city where everyone had come out to enjoy the evening beneath the new foliage of the great elms.

Everything had grown clear. All about the plateau could be heard the expanding of the life of the world.

"Need of joy," said Bobi, for those who were beside him and opposite, Aurore, Zulma, Joséphine, and for those who were farther along the table talking softly among themselves. But they heard, mingled with the sounds of the earth, the voice of the man and his confidence......

Joy of Man's Desiring, p189
Counterpoint Press, 1999