No More Learning

Does the body slip from you as it does from me? They have not shut your
window into eternity?

ANDREW.

Thomas never shut a window I could not get through. I knew you were one
of my own sort. When I am sluggish in the morning, Thomas says, 'Poor
Andrew is getting old. ' That is all he knows. The way to keep young is
to do the things youngsters do. Twenty years I have been slipping away,
and he never found me out yet!

MARTIN.

That is what they call ecstasy, but there is no word that can tell out
very plain what it means. That freeing of the mind from its thoughts,
those wonders we know when we put them into words; the words seem as
little like them as blackberries are like the moon and sun.

ANDREW.

I found that myself the time they knew me to be wild, and used to be
asking me to say what pleasure did I find in cards, and women, and
drink.

MARTIN.
You might help me to remember that vision I had this morning, to
understand it. The memory of it has slipped from me. Wait, it is coming
back, little by little. I know that I saw the unicorns trampling, and
then a figure, a many-changing figure, holding some bright thing.
I knew something was going to happen or to be said, something that
would make my whole life strong and beautiful like the rushing of the
unicorns, and then, and then--

JOHNNY BACACH'S _voice at window_.

A poor person I am, without food, without a way, without portion,
without costs, without a person or a stranger, without means, without
hope, without health, without warmth--

ANDREW [_looking towards window_].

It is that troop of beggars. Bringing their tricks and their thieveries
they are to the Kinvara Fair.

MARTIN [_impatiently_].

There is no quiet--come to the other room. I am trying to remember.

[_They go to door of inner room, but ANDREW stops him. _

ANDREW.

They are a bad-looking fleet. I have a mind to drive them away, giving
them a charity.

MARTIN.