a faded tablecloth

You invent nothing, you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum one day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it wept.

We panicked again for a moment, but the wind switched direction without warning, and we slowly drifted away till we fetched up at Tsukuda island, where the Sumida runs into the bay.

temporal blessings, whether such as concern the public […] or such as concern our particular