the female’s feet are lifted toward the heavens and the jade stalk is inserted deeply into the jade gate.

He had to grasshop her, using long poles cabled to a donkey-engine capstan. Slowly, laboriously the ship inched backward, her fireboxes glowing orange-red, the crack of blocks and the booming slam of her engines shattering the night.

I'm going along like a lame duck striddling a gutter.

Oh, all these are nothing else than God's glorious and goodful thoughts, embodied in beautiful and sublime forms, written radiantly on the blue of the sky or whispered musically in the voices of the universe.