How It Is by Samuel Beckett Read Free Book Online Page B

it I may last a little more and while
     waiting
    prayer in vain to sleep I have no right to it yet I haven’t yet deserved it prayer
     for prayer’s sake when all fails when I think of the souls in torment true torment
     true souls who have no right to it no right ever to sleep we’re talking of sleep I
     prayed for them once if I may believe an old view it has faded
    me again always everywhere in the light age unknown seen from behind on my knees arse
     bare on the summit of a muckheap clad in a sack bottom burst to let the head through
     holding in my mouth the horizontal staff of a vast banner on which I read
    in thy clemency now and then let the great damned sleep here something illegible in
     the folds then dream perhaps of the good time their naughtiness procured them what
     time the demons may rest ten seconds fifteen seconds
    sleep sole good brief movements of the lower face no sound sole good come quench these
     two old coals that have nothing more to see and this old kiln destroyed by fire and
     in all this tenement
    all this tenement of naught from top to bottom from hair to toe and finger-nails what
     little sensation it still has of what it still is in all its parts and dream
    dream come of a sky an earth an under-earth where I am inconceivable aah no sound in the rectum a redhot spike that day we prayed no further
    how often kneeling how often from behind kneeling from every angle from behind in
     every posture if he wasn’t me he was always the same cold comfort
    one buttock twice too big the other twice too small unless an optical delusion here
     when you shit it’s the mud that wipes I haven’t touched them for an eternity in other
     words the ratio four to one I always loved arithmetic it has paid me back in full
    Pim’s though undersized were iso he could have done with a third I fleshed them indistinctly
     something wrong there but first have done with my travelling days part one before
     Pim how it was leaving only part two leaving only part three and last
    in the days when I still hugged the walls in the midst of my brotherly likes I hear
     it and murmur that then above in the light at every bodily pain the moral leaving
     me as ice I screamed for help with once in a hundred some measure of success
    as when exceptionally the worse for drink at the small hour of the garbage-man in
     my determination to leave the elevator I caught my foot twixt cage and landing and
     two hours later to the tick someone came running having summoned it in vain
    old dream I’m not deceived or I am it all depends on what is not said on the day it
     all depends on the day farewell rats the ship is sunk a little less is all one begs
    a little less of no matter what no matter how no matter when a little less of to be
     present past future and conditional of to be and not to be come come enough of that
     on and end part one before Pim
    fire in the rectum how surmounted reflections on the passion of pain irresistible
     departure with preparatives appertaining uneventful journey sudden arrival lights
     low lights out bye-bye is it a dream
    a dream what a hope death of sack arse of Pim end of part one leaving only part two
     leaving only part three and last Thalia for pity’s sake a leaf of thine ivy
    quick the head in the sack where saving your reverence I have all the suffering of
     all the ages I don’t give a curse for it and howls of laughter in every cell the tins
     rattle like castanets and under me convulsed the mud goes guggle-guggle I fart and
     piss in the same breath
    blessed day last of the journey all goes without a hitch the joke dies too old the
     convulsions die I come back to the open air to serious things had I only the little
     finger to raise to be wafted straight to Abraham’s bosom I’d tell him to stick it
     up
    some reflections none the less while waiting for things to improve on the fragility
     of euphoria among the different orders of the animal kingdom beginning with the sponges
     when suddenly