People were dancing the Madison, all synchronized. Jameson, his masks removed, sat down to look at them. His eyes fixed on Mawrdew Czgowchwz and Jacob Beltane, laughing, dancing face to face in the two seemingly endless lines—Czgowchwz facing in Jameson’s direction. He began seeing other figures dancing awkwardly *in words* in the middle distance. Lurking there, glaring past these at his subject (Mawrdew Czgowchwz), he commenced to hear his own voice reading his own ode in his own head, as if it were another voice (on its own). The dancing figures in the words in the middle distance grew even sharper in their definitions. Their movements grew elegant. The colors of their raiments stood out against the ground of the dawn.
The first, in ruby, proclaimed the wedlock of the noun and the verb. The second, veiled in divers tones of the emblematic Czgowchwz color, kept repeating Jameson’s own first words in his own voice. The third, the yellow didact, transformed Jameson’s words into flesh. The fourth shown green, announcing words that contain their opposites, resolving them at the liquid center of formal intention. The fifth, garbed in forthright blue, presented the words in a patter of intentional sounds, aspiring to the condition of music. The sixth, the indigoferous, the illative, dharma shade, the tantric, insisted the words go galloping—winding on and on until *the words said the reader*. The majestic, purpled seventh came through at the precise moment of the first light, silent at first, then, assuming audible force, repeating Jameson’s words over and over again until, dissolving into the first dawning mist (the while the other figures fell away in shadows and the unheeding dancers dancing the Madison rollicked on), it chanted: “To turn about, to abstract, to salute, to celebrate.” Apostrophe! Apostrophe! Apostrophe! Apostrophe! Jameson began to write, sitting there, looking.
