A coughball of laughter leaped from his throat dragging after it a
rattling chain of phlegm. He turned back quickly, coughing, laughing, his
lifted arms waving to the air.

--She never let them in, he cried again through his laughter as he
stamped on gaitered feet over the gravel of the path. That's why.

On his wise shoulders through the checkerwork of leaves the sun flung
spangles, dancing coins.


* * * * * * *


Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought
through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and
seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust:
coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he
was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his
sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, MAESTRO
DI COLOR CHE SANNO. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane,
adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it it is a gate, if
not a door. Shut your eyes and see.

Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and
shells. You are walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at a time. A
very short space of time through very short times of space. Five, six: the
NACHEINANDER. Exactly: and that is the ineluctable modality of the
audible. Open your eyes. No. Jesus! If I fell over a cliff that beetles
o'er his base, fell through the NEBENEINANDER ineluctably! I am getting on
nicely in the dark. My ash sword hangs at my side. Tap with it: they do.
My two feet in his boots are at the ends of his legs, NEBENEINANDER.
Sounds solid: made by the mallet of LOS DEMIURGOS. Am I walking into
eternity along Sandymount strand? Crush, crack, crick, crick. Wild sea
money. Dominie Deasy kens them a'.


WON'T YOU COME TO SANDYMOUNT,
MADELINE THE MARE?


Rhythm begins, you see. I hear. Acatalectic tetrameter of iambs
marching. No, agallop: DELINE THE MARE.

Open your eyes now. I will. One moment. Has all vanished since? If I
open and am for ever in the black adiaphane. BASTA! I will see if I can
see.

See now. There all the time without you: and ever shall be, world
without end.

They came down the steps from Leahy's terrace prudently,
FRAUENZIMMER: and down the shelving shore flabbily, their splayed feet
sinking in the silted sand. Like me, like Algy, coming down to our mighty
mother. Number one swung lourdily her midwife's bag, the other's gamp
poked in the beach. From the liberties, out for the day. Mrs Florence
MacCabe, relict of the late Patk MacCabe, deeply lamented, of Bride
Street. One of her sisterhood lugged me squealing into life. Creation from
nothing. What has she in the bag? A misbirth with a trailing navelcord,
hushed in ruddy wool. The cords of all link back, strandentwining cable of
all flesh. That is why mystic monks. Will you be as gods? Gaze in your
OMPHALOS. Hello! Kinch here. Put me on to Edenville. Aleph, alpha: nought,
nought, one.

Spouse and helpmate of Adam Kadmon: Heva, naked Eve. She had
no navel. Gaze. Belly without blemish, bulging big, a buckler of taut
vellum, no, whiteheaped corn, orient and immortal, standing from
everlasting to everlasting. Womb of sin.

Wombed in sin darkness I was too, made not begotten. By them, the
man with my voice and my eyes and a ghostwoman with ashes on her
breath. They clasped and sundered, did the coupler's will. From before the
ages He willed me and now may not will me away or ever. A LEX ETERNA
stays about Him. Is that then the divine substance wherein Father and Son
are consubstantial? Where is poor dear Arius to try conclusions? Warring
his life long upon the contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality. Illstarred
heresiarch' In a Greek watercloset he breathed his last: euthanasia. With
beaded mitre and with crozier, stalled upon his throne, widower of a
widowed see, with upstiffed omophorion, with clotted hinderparts.

Airs romped round him, nipping and eager airs. They are coming,
waves. The whitemaned seahorses, champing, brightwindbridled, the steeds
of Mananaan.

I mustn't forget his letter for the press. And after? The Ship, half
twelve. By the way go easy with that money like a good young imbecile.

Yes, I must.

His pace slackened. Here. Am I going to aunt Sara's or not? My
consubstantial father's voice. Did you see anything of your artist brother
Stephen lately? No? Sure he's not down in Strasburg terrace with his aunt

Sally? Couldn't he fly a bit higher than that, eh? And and and and tell
us, Stephen, how is uncle Si? O, weeping God, the things I married into!
De boys up in de hayloft. The drunken little costdrawer and his brother,
the cornet player. Highly respectable gondoliers! And skeweyed Walter
sirring his father, no less! Sir. Yes, sir. No, sir. Jesus wept: and no
wonder, by Christ!



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