When All Else Fails, Philosophize.

He Would Not Mind Hearing Petrus's Story One Day. But Preferably Not Reduced To English. More And More He Is Convinced That English Is An Unfit Medium For The Truth Of South Africa. Stretches Of English Code Whole Sentences Long Have Thickened, Lost Their Articulations, Their Articulateness, Their Articulatedness. Like A Dinosaur Expiring And Settling In The Mud, The Language Has Stiffened. Pressed Into The Mold Of English, Petrus's Story Would Come Out Arthritic, Bygone"(117).

But It Is The Knowledge Of How Contingent My Unease Is, How Dependent On A Baby That Wails Beneath My Window One Day And Does Not Wail The Next, That Brings The Worst Shame To Me, The Greatest Indifference To Annihilation. I Know Somewhat Too Much; And From This Knowledge, Once One Has Been Infected, There Seems To Be No Recovering. I Ought Never To Have Taken My Lantern To See What Was Going On In The Hut By The Granary. On The Other Hand, There Was No Way, Once I Had Picked Up The Lantern, For Me To Put It Down Again. The Knot Loops In Upon Itself; I Cannot Find The End.

He Even Knew The Reason Why: Because Enough Men Had Gone Off To War Saying The Time For Gardening Was When The War Was Over; Whereas There Must Be Men To Stay Behind And Keep Gardening Alive, Or At Least The Idea Of Gardening; Because Once That Cord Was Broken, The Earth Would Grow Hard And Forget Her Children. That Was Why.

So It Has Come, The Day Of Testing. Without Warning, Without Fanfare, It Is Here, And He Is In The Middle Of It. In His Chest His Heart Hammers So Hard That It Too, In Its Dumb Way, Must Know. How Will They Stand Up To The Testing, He And His Heart?

One Day Some As Yet Unborn Scholar Will Recognize In The Clock The Machine That Has Tamed The Wilds.