"In the final analysis," Breton writes, "it's not such a bad thing for these images to upset the mind, for to upset the mind is to put it in the wrong." (23) Bitsui doesn't mince his words but explodes them: "Bison horns twist into the sides of trains / winding through the broth-filled eyes of hens / squawking from the icebox." Bison, once strong and wild, are replaced with the
rheumy eyes of caged hens, brought to us by the trains and highways that did their part to destroy first the buffalo and then the people.
Heed fey symbols or signs which sense brute pain, warnor bode dire straits, barren woe, cruel fate: Ringing bells pealed,tolled grisly night, chilly rain,
rheumy mist, eerie pall.
But in a year or so he would become someone else, the shaggy barefoot guru with the
rheumy eyes padding between Newman Hall in Waterloo Quadrant and the urban proto-commune in Boyle Crescent, Grafton.
20 Warwickshire phrases 20 Warwickshire phrases Apricock - Apricot Bloodboltered - Covered in blood Caggie-handed - Left-handed De Di - Ice Cream Englut - Eat greedily Fadge - To suit Fap - Drunk Firk - Reprimand / scold Honey-stalks - Clover Intpinse - Mess, confusion, tangle Ronvon - Derisive word for a woman Knap - To hit Mammock - To break or tear Ninny - A fool or nincompoop Puttock - A kite Ronvon - Derisive word for a woman
Rheumy - Moist Swinge-buckler - A bully Unpregnant - Inane Wall-eyed - Shocked Zany - Crazy buffoonery
"I remember one lady looking at me with vast,
rheumy eyes, and she said, 'When we were young we thought we were human beings; now we're not even like animals.
To think this all but wasted soul with
rheumy eyes had participated in the country's first indigenous Everest climb in 1965, and been awarded the Tiger Badge for it!
He never came back," Sarkiss said, tears welling in his
rheumy eyes.
Most often, Hitler appears as an angular and increasingly mange-spattered wolf, sometimes with colossal tears of shame spurting from his
rheumy eyes, his fangs yellowed and flecked.
She felt uncomfortable, so many
rheumy eyes following her.
His eyes are
rheumy, several teeth are missing, his beard is knotted, and there are sores on his neck which, I assume, extend all the way down.
be there, her hands smelling of thyme and garlic, onions; her
rheumyI wanted it to be the last, and it worked out, just happened, that way regardless of my wishes, no matter; and now, nursing an unpleasant head cold I console myself--my mind being useless for anything else, though even in its
rheumy state hovering around essential things--by recalling the autumns of Berlin....
The lids are slow to open, and even then, the eyes are
rheumy, bewildered.
Juvenal also spilled the gossip on Eppia, the wife of a senator, saying she abandoned her children and ran off to Egypt with a gladiator even though he had "a broken arm, a big bump on the nose and a
rheumy eye."
Jennifer Feather in "To 'Tempt the
Rheumy and Unpurged Air': Contagion and Agency in Julius Caesar" makes the interesting suggestion that Brutus suffers from "inverse akrasia," i.e., doing the right thing against one's best judgment: one decides that a certain course of action is morally required, but one fails to act on that decision because of some underlying qualm or softness of character--and actually the failure is morally preferable.
