"The Sea"

Taking up the book again is quite a pleasure:

• Out of his room he is the vertical man itself.
• The shed, although tumbledown, is really rather handsome when looked at with a sympathetic eye, the wood of it weathered to a silky, silvery grey.
• A white seabird, dazzling against the wall of cloud, flew up on sickle wings and turned with a soundless snap and plunged itself, a shutting chevron, into the sea's unruly back.
  
• (After the wedding guests left:) A dark burst of starlings out of nowhere flew over the marquee, their wings making a chatter that was like a sudden round of applause, exuberant and sarcastic.
  

Lamenting airs:
__ .. so mundanely real, Patsy the farmer and Mary the emigrant and little Willie who died, all crowding in on my private ceremony of remembering like uninvited poor relations at a fancy funeral.
__ These days whole churchyardsfull of mourners traipse back and forth unfeelingly over my grave.
__ What a little vessel of sadness we are.

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