It is too late: the life of all his blood is touched corruptibly, and his pure brain, . . . doth . . . foretell the ending of mortality.
— Shakespeare
The Life and Death of King John
After my brothers and I shot the baby
sparrows that had fallen with their nest, I
stayed behind. My corruption, you see,
hadn't grown wings, couldn't rationalize
the weight of lead pellets. And isn't it
true that the blood is touched and that the heart
worms around inside the body like a cyst,
like something that rots? And the brain: one part
innocence (as it should have been), and one
part a flowing cave of dread, with "shame" filling
up on all sides. I put the gun away
and never said that the tree became a
mountain, or how much loss was stretched like sky
across its winter peak, or how the winter stayed.