/lit/ - Literature

Gully Jimson to his young follower, Nosey: “You really want to be useful, Nosey? Then, get me a tiger.” Now talking to the painting: “Tiger, tiger, burning bright, in the forest of the night, what immortal hand or eye, could frame they fearful symmetry? Not mine! Did he smile, his work to see, did he who make the lamb, make thee? Apparently! We should have got something live, from the zoo!”

Nosey: “I like it Mr. Jimson.”

Gully: “You like meringues, cream puffs, and candy floss. I’m sorry. I should have learned by now its easy to offend the faith of the little ones.”

Nosey: “You didn’t offend me, Mr. Jimson. Perhaps I’m not the little one you imagine. I’ve got eyes in my head and I like your tiger.”

Gully: “The trouble with you is you’re an enthusiast, like my dad. He’d stop painting a picture of a girl on a swing and go right on to the shine of a rose thorn, and the pollen in a lily, and then lacquer it. Me, I like starting, but I don’t like going on. For me, the tiger is dead. And the rest is a blank.”

Nosey: “What do you see in the blank, Mr. Jimson?”

Gully: “A kind of colored music in the mind. A glass green Lazarus, stiff as an ice man. My mother bore me in the southern wild and I am black… how does it go on? Where’s your education?”

Nosey: “When I from black and he from white cloud free.”

Gully: “Freedom, that’s it! Freedom from paint brushes. From fear of yourself. Freedom to do or not to do. Freedom to come and go, as your please. Black, white, yellow… black.”