'And sometimes even then, in the stacks of the Municipal Library, in the sound of dust, and the smell of decaying, aged flesh, he would open a book to dedicate himself anew. And he would stand shivering for the daring of the words, their sheer ejaculation.
On one occasion Waldo Brown had found:
In my dry brain my spirit soon,
Down-deepening from swoon to swoon
Faints like a dazzled moving moon.
The wind sounds like a silver wire,
And from beyond the moon on fire
Is pour'd upon the hills, and higher
The skies stoop down in their desire ...
He shut the book so quick, so tight, the explosion might have been heard by anyone coming to catch him at something forbidden, disgraceful and which he would never dare again until he could no longer resist. He looked around, but found nobody else in the stacks. Only books. A throbbing of books. He went to the lavatory to wash his hot sticky hands.'
Quotation from: The Solid Mandala by Patrick White, 1966 (Eyre & Spottiswoode)
