A Winter Noon

Who in the moment of my happiness (God forgive my using a word so grand, so terrible) reduced my brief delight nearly to tears? No doubt you'll say: "A certain beautiful creature who was walking by and smiled at you." But no: a child's balloon, a blue, meandering balloon against the azure of the air, my native sky never so clear and cold as it was then, at high noon on a dazzling winter day. That sky with here and there a wisp of cloud, and upper windows flaming in the sun, and faint smoke from a chimney, maybe two, and over everything, every divine thing, that globe that had escaped a boy's incautious fingers (surely he was out there broadcasting through the crowded square his grief, his immense grief) between the great facade of the Stock Exchange and the café where I, behind a window, watched with shining eyes the rise and fall of what he once possessed.