--You, Cochrane, what city sent for him?
--There was a battle, sir.
The boy's blank face asked the blank window.
Fabled by the daughters of memory. And yet it was in some way if not as memory fabled
it. A phrase, then, of impatience, thud of Blake's wings of excess. I hear the ruin of all
space, shattered glass and toppling masonry, and time one livid final flame. What's left us
then?
--I forget the place, sir. 279 B. C.
--Asculum, Stephen said, glancing at the name and date in the gorescarred book.
--Yes, sir. And he said: ANOTHER VICTORY LIKE THAT AND WE ARE DONE
FOR.
That phrase the world had remembered. A dull ease of the mind. From a hill above a
corpsestrewn plain a general speaking to his officers, leaned upon his spear. Any general
to any officers. They lend ear.
--You, Armstrong, Stephen said. What was the end of Pyrrhus?
--I know, sir. Ask me, sir, Comyn said.
--Wait. You, Armstrong. Do you know anything about Pyrrhus?
A bag of figrolls lay snugly in Armstrong's satchel. He curled them between his palms at
whiles and swallowed them softly. Crumbs adhered to the tissue of his lips. A sweetened
boy's breath. Welloff people, proud that their eldest son was in the navy. Vico road,
Dalkey.
--Pyrrhus, sir? Pyrrhus, a pier.
