It's a smile thrown across an abyss. The whole stinking civilized world lies like a quagmire at the bottom of the pit, and over it, like a mirage, hovers this wavering smile.
One day, a magician came to the man and said to him, "I can make your son happy and turn his frowns into smiles, but you must pay me a great price for telling him the secret."
The summer sky was bluer then, the sycamores smiled in the sun, and the hot days drowsed by, punctuated with velvet evenings when fireflies flashed outside my bedroom window.