11 The work under way, it is always spring, whatever the weather, outside or in. 12 The writer along with his words is already in the thick, the middle things. 13 We above all have ‘unclean lips’. May the tongs with a coal from the altar touch our tongues. 14 A whiskered ancestor, his wife with her hand at rest in his elbow, his daughter smiling knowingly at nobody, fade into the sepia. I smile in vain at the unapproachable dead, gazing intently at their pose, their poise. But the more I look, the more they seem to be looking back, as if they were. An upright Edwards, no doubt aware of his daughter’s hand on his shoulder, with affable unearthly concentration stares me down. The bush that throws its teeming leafiness beside the door, the very bricks of the house cry out with presence. Where are they, who appear suddenly, like angels, who stand unmoving and silently question? And now the three

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