From James Merrill’s The Seraglio:
Lily…rehearsed the rules he obeyed at her age, in the same walled garden.
“Uncle Francis is It,” she announced proudly at last. “If he wants to play he has to be It.”
Francis shuts his eyes and counts to a hundred:
“Ready or not!” he shouted…With exaggerated stealth and flashing stern glances into the greenery he started across the lawn…Where were they? No sound of smothered laughter came to ease his confusion.
But only after coming upon the children building castles at the sea’s edge, oblivious to him, did Francis stare over the lulled water and understand. He was It. He tentatively said so the first time, then once more with an exquisite tremor of conviction: “I am It.”
The words carried with them wondrous notions of selflessness, of permanence. His father coughed behind him in the house. The children trembled against the sea. He knew the expression on his own face. The entire world was real.
Lily…rehearsed the rules he obeyed at her age, in the same walled garden.
“Uncle Francis is It,” she announced proudly at last. “If he wants to play he has to be It.”
Francis shuts his eyes and counts to a hundred:
“Ready or not!” he shouted…With exaggerated stealth and flashing stern glances into the greenery he started across the lawn…Where were they? No sound of smothered laughter came to ease his confusion.
But only after coming upon the children building castles at the sea’s edge, oblivious to him, did Francis stare over the lulled water and understand. He was It. He tentatively said so the first time, then once more with an exquisite tremor of conviction: “I am It.”
The words carried with them wondrous notions of selflessness, of permanence. His father coughed behind him in the house. The children trembled against the sea. He knew the expression on his own face. The entire world was real.