The Names

People sit on the steps of the Propylaea as if in a classroom, fifty of them, listening to their guide. The faces are intent, arranged in rows on the marble heights among the common encumbrances and gear, the handbags, cameras, sun hats.Amid the scaffolding above them a workman slips the bit of a power drill into a block of dressed stone. The shank of the drill is a full meter long and produces a noise of rotating abrasions that sings among the columns and walls.The native stone is worn smooth, worn down by treading feet, lustrous and slick. An old box camera stands on a tripod with a black cloth hanging down. It is aimed at the Parthenon.We approach hypnotically, walking on the smooth stones, not watching where we step. The west facade rears before us. It would take a wrenching effort to avert our eyes from it. I'd seen the temple a hundred times from the street, never suspecting it was this big, this scarred, broken, rough. How different from the spotlighted bijou I'd seen from the car that night, coming back from Piraeus, a year ago.The marble seems to drip with honey, the pale autumnal hue produced by iron oxide in the stone. And there are stones lying about, stones everywhere as I cross around to the south colo

The Prairie

14

He was in the middle of a crowd, tongue tied! There was a man in a daise like a drunkerds skuffling lurch, realing in a corner. One window had glass, three others were boarded up when the glass was broken, and it wasn't conveeniently well lighted in there, like an Indian's hut of adoby and straw. "Childs play" came a voice through the gloom. It was the widow Larsen his mother's friend that smelt of spoilt milk. Or someone said "Come across, get right" and it was directed right to him. It was like one of his teeth chattering dreams when he was in the middle of the mirky depths and they called to him from all around. He felt retched, he mumbled in his mind. "Yeeld" came another voice and it was none but the old cantankerus man with the crooked face and laim leg, known as a nefariot skeemer and rummy, natural born for bone picking. "Yeeld" he followed up. Everywhere the others were speaking, but he didn't know what they were saying. The strange language burst out of them, like people out of breath and breathing words instead of air. But what words, what were they saying? Right next to him was his father bursting forth in secret language which the boy could not decifer in the least. It sounded like a man who talks to owls. The circuit rider watched him. He smiled at the boy and nodded apealingly but his face was like a patch of midnight that has never been cleared away. A secret mockery was wrapped in his friendlyness. What was this strange tongue they spoke? Was it the language of the plains Indians? No, because we know it from the gospels and the acts. This strange and age old practise was glossylalya, to speak with tongues. To some a gift but to Orville Benton a curse and calamitty! The words echoed in his head. People burst out in sudden streams. They were like long dolerus tales being dold out one by one. Who's words were they? What did they mean? There was none to tell him in that gloomy place. Something he did not like troubled him. The same haunting feeling that he felt in the darkest nights crept over him like gang green. He felt droplets of clammy sweat form on his forhead. The circuit rider's firm hand was on his shoulder and then on his youthful head. "White words" his nodding face remarked. "Pure as the drivelin snow." His eyes bored through the middle of Orville's forhead. He stiffend visibly. The rain was like horses hooves on the roof, leaking through the patches. He took his hand off the boy's head to stretch his fingers and make the bones crack. "Yeeld" his mother said to him with a wiry look that was like a rathful warning to mind his ma