let us build, let us build

Not too distant from C.'s great hall with its central pillar of rock there is a shallow chamber where stands a large wall that is more than twenty metres wide. She goes into the bathroom, finding a warmer environment there and lets the boiling water run into the bath. The cold water that was touching his body and ruffling his hair makes him shiver. After periods of eruptions drops of hard calcerous water from the mountain streams filter down through the rocks and gradually leave transparent strata on the walls or form columns of stalactites or stalagmites that hang from the vault or rise from the floor until they meet.

(Nanni Balestrini, Tristano: a Novel (#11246), 1966/2014, tr. Mike Harakis)



His nest in the season of floods is dry:
Like him let us build, let us build on high.
We may not on earth, let us build in the sky.

(John Lloyd, The Kingfisher, 1847)