18.27

Grapes do not grow on thorns

Then the Portagee knew; for this was the night when every paisano who wasn’t in jail wandered restlessly through the forest. This was the night when all buried treasure sent up a faint phosphorescent glow through the ground. There was plenty of treaure in the woods, too. Monterey had been invaded many times in two hundred years, and each time valuables had been hidden in the earth.

The night was clear. Pilon had emerged from his hard daily shell, as he did now and then. He was the idealist to-night, the giver of gifts. This night he was engaged in a mission of kindness.

I heard in the shell

                                         All the hymns of hell,

                            I heard all the angels crying,

                                         I heard the earth

                                         In pangs of birth

                           And all the galaxies dying. . . .

                                         I heard in the shell

                                         The throb of each cell

                           From flower and rock and feather.

                                         But loudest of all

                                         Rang the quiet call

                           Of Yes and No singing together.

John Betjeman.