
The Grey Notebook. Manuscript, page 1
8th March 1918 -
[...] Halfway through the afternoon it starts to rain - a
fine, dense, slight, steady drizzle. There's not a breath of air. The sky is
low and leaden. I hear the rain falling on the ground and the trees in the
garden. It makes a distant, muted sound, like the sound of the sea in
winter. March rain, cold, chilling. As the evening sets in, the grey sky
becomes a gauzy white - livid, unreal. In the village, weighing on the
rooftops, there is a dense, a palpable, silence. The sound of the falling
water lengthens it out in a vague music.
The Grey Notebook
(translated by David Warwick Orr)