Sublime

They never tired of the sound of their own voices, not for one minute, and the sound of some of their voices had changed – their voices had broken, apparently. Whenever she heard that peculiar phrase she imagined something down in their throats tearing, a thin pink membrane, not unlike the hymen perhaps.

The voice was not only mellifluent and clear, but the emphasis was so just, and the modulation so impassioned, that it seemed as if an heart of stone could not fail of being moved by it. It imparted to me an emotion altogether involuntary and incontroulable.

There is such trauma from the past, so many hostile voices, that keep the artist chained and afraid. The Gardener’s words, spoken in the strange little potting shed at one edge of the Garden.