We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville, Tennessee in the time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child. It was a little bit mixed sort of block, fairly solidly lower middle class, with one or two juts1 apiece on either side of that. The houses corresponded. middle-sized gracefully2 fretted3 wood houses built in the late nineties and early nineteen hundreds, with small front and side and more spacious4 back yards, and trees in the yards, and porches. These were soft-wooded trees, poplars, tulip trees, cottonwoods. There were fences around one or two of the houses, but mainly the yards ran into each other with only now and then a low hedge that wasn’t doing very well. There were few good friends among the grown people, and they were not poor enough for the other sort of intimate acquaintance, but everyone nodded and spoke5, and even might talk short times, trivially, and at the two extremes of the general or the particular, and ordinarily next-door neighbors talked quite a bit when they happened to run into each other, and never paid calls. The men were mostly small businessmen, one or two very modestly executives, one or two worked with their hands, most of them clerical, and most of them between thirty and forty-five.
But it is of these evenings, I speak.
Supper was at six and was over by half past. There was still daylight, shining softly and with a tarnish6, like the lining7 of a shell, and the carbon lamps lifted at the corners were on in the light, and the locusts9 were started, and the fire flies were out, and a few frogs’ were flopping10 in the dewy grass, by the time the fathers and the children came out. The children ran out first hell bent11 and yelling those names by which they were known; then the fathers sank out leisurely12 in crossed suspenders, their collars removed and their necks looking tall and shy. The mothers stayed back in the kitchen washing and drying, putting things away, re-crossing their traceless footsteps like the lifetime journeys of bees, measuring out the dry cocoa for breakfast. When they came out they had taken off their aprons13 and their skirts were dampened and they sat in rockers on their porches quietly.
It is not of the games children play in the evening that I want to speak now, it is of a contemporaneous atmosphere that has little to do with them: that of the fathers of families, each in his space of lawn, his shirt fishlike pale in the unnatural14 light and his face nearly anonymous15, hosing their lawns. The hoses were attached at spiggots that stood out of the brick foundations of the houses. The nozzles were variously set but usually so there was a long sweet stream of spray, the nozzle wet in the hand, the water trickling16 the right forearm and the peeled-back cuff17, and the water whishing out a long loose and low-curved cone18, and so gentle a sound. First an insane noise of violence in the nozzle, then the still irregular sound of adjustment, then the smoothing into steadiness and a pitch as accurately19 tuned20 to the size and style of stream as any violin. So many qualities of sound out of one hose: so many choral differences out of those several hoses that were in earshot. Out of any one hose, the almost dead silence of the release, and the short still arch of the separate big drops, silent as a held breath, and the only noise the flattering noise on leaves and the slapped grass at the fall of each big drop. That, and the intense hiss21 with the intense stream; that, and that same intensity22 not growing less but growing more quiet and delicate with the turn of the nozzle, up to that extreme tender whisper when the water was just a wide bell of film. Chiefly, though, the hoses were set much alike, in a compromise between distance and tenderness of spray, (and quite surely a sense of art behind this compromise, and a quiet deep joy, too real to recognize itself), and the sounds therefore were pitched much alike; pointed23 by the snorting start of a new hose; decorated by some man playful with the nozzle; left empty, like God by the sparrow’s fall, when any single one of them desists: and all, though near alike, of various pitch; and in this unison24. These sweet pale streamings in the light lift out their pallors and their voices all together, mothers hushing their children, the hushing unnaturally25 prolonged, the men gentle and silent and each snail-like withdrawn26 into the quietude of what he singly is doing, the urination of huge children stood loosely military against an invisible wall, and gentle happy and peaceful, tasting the mean goodness of their living like the last of their suppers in their mouths; while the locusts carry on this noise of hoses on their much higher and sharper key. The noise of the locust8 is dry, and it seems not to be rasped or vibrated but urged from him as if through a small orifice by a breath that can never give out. Also there is never one locust but an illusion of at least a thousand. The noise of each locust is pitched in some classic locust range out of which none of them varies more than two full tones: and yet you seem to hear each locust discrete27 from all the rest, and there is a long, slow, pulse in their noise, like the scarcely defined arch of a long and high set bridge. They are all around in every tree, so that the noise seems to come from nowhere and everywhere at once, from the whole shell heaven, shivering in your flesh and teasing your eardrums, the boldest of all the sounds of night. And yet it is habitual28 to summer nights, and is of the great order of noises, like the noises of the sea and of the blood her precocious29 grandchild, which you realize you are hearing only when you catch yourself listening. Meantime from low in the dark, just outside the swaying horizons of the hoses, conveying always grass in the damp of dew and its strong green-black smear30 of smell, the regular yet spaced noises of the crickets, each a sweet cold silver noise three-noted, like the slipping each time of three matched links of a small chain.
But the men by now, one by one, have silenced their hoses and drained and coiled them. Now only two, and now only one, is left, and you see only ghostlike shirt with the sleeve garters, and sober mystery of his mild face like the lifted face of large cattle enquiring31 of your presence in a pitch-dark pool of meadow; and now he too is gone; and it has become that time of evening when people sit on their porches, rocking gently and talking gently and watching the street and the standing32 up into their sphere of possession of the trees, of birds hung havens33, hangars. People go by; things go by. A horse, drawing a buggy, breaking his hollow iron music on the asphalt; a loud auto34, a quiet auto, people in pairs, not in a hurry, scuffling, switching their weight of aestival body, talking casually35, the taste hovering36 over them of vanilla37, straw berry, pasteboard and starched38 milk, the image upon them of lovers and horsemen, squared with clowns in hueless39 amber40. A street car raising its iron moan, stopping, belting and starting; stertorous41; rousing and raising again its iron increasing moan and swimming its gold windows and straw seats on past and past and past, the bleak42 spark crackling and cursing above it like a small malignant43 spirit set to dog its tracks; the iron whine44 rises on rising speed; still risen, faints, halts; the faint stinging bell, rises again, still fainter, fainting, lifting, lifts, faints forgone45: forgotten. Now is the night one blue dew.
Now is the night one blue dew, my father has drained, he has coiled the hose.
Low on the length of lawns, a (railing of fire who breathes.
Content, silver, like peeps of light, each cricket makes his comment over and over in the drowned grass.
A cold toad46 thumpily flounders.
Within the edges of damp shadows of side yards are hovering children nearly sick with joy of fear, who watch the unguarding of a telephone pole.
Around white carbon corner lamps bugs47 of all sizes are lifted elliptic, solar systems. Big hardshells bruise48 themselves, assailant: he is fallen on his back, legs squiggling.
Parents on porches. rock and rock: From damp strings49 morning glories: hang their ancient faces.
The dry and exalted50 noise of the locusts from all the air at once enchants51 my eardrums.
On the rough wet grass of the back yard my father and mother have spread quilts. We all lie there, my mother, my father, my uncle, my aunt, and I too am lying there. First we were sitting up, then one of us lay down, and then we all lay down, on our stomachs, or on our sides, or on our backs, and they have kept on talking. They are not talking much, and the talk is quiet, of nothing in particular, of nothing at all in particular, of nothing at all. The stars are wide and alive, they seem each like a smile of great sweetness, and they seem very near. All my people are larger bodies than mine, quiet, with voices gentle and meaningless like the voices of sleeping birds. One is an artist, he is living at home. One is a musician, she is living at home. One is my mother who is good to me. One is my father who is good to me. By some chance, here they are, all on this earth; and who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth, lying, on quilts, on the grass, in a summer evening, among the sounds of the night. May God bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father, oh, remember them kindly52 in their time of trouble; and in the hour of their taking away.
After a little I am taken in and put to bed. Sleep, soft smiling, draws me unto her: and those receive me, who quietly treat me, as one familiar and well-beloved in that home: but will not, oh, will not, not now, not ever; but will not ever tell me who I am.
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juts
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| v.（使）突出( jut的第三人称单数 )；伸出；（从…）突出；高出 | |
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gracefully
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| ad.大大方方地；优美地 | |
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fretted
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| 焦躁的，附有弦马的，腐蚀的 | |
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spacious
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| adj.广阔的，宽敞的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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tarnish
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| n.晦暗，污点；vt.使失去光泽；玷污 | |
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lining
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| n.衬里，衬料 | |
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locust
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| n.蝗虫；洋槐，刺槐 | |
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locusts
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| n.蝗虫( locust的名词复数 )；贪吃的人；破坏者；槐树 | |
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flopping
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| n.贬调v.（指书、戏剧等）彻底失败( flop的现在分词 )；（因疲惫而）猛然坐下；（笨拙地、不由自主地或松弛地）移动或落下；砸锅 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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leisurely
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| adj.悠闲的；从容的，慢慢的 | |
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aprons
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| 围裙( apron的名词复数 )； 停机坪，台口（舞台幕前的部份） | |
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unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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anonymous
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| adj.无名的；匿名的；无特色的 | |
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trickling
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| n.油画底色含油太多而成泡沫状突起v.滴( trickle的现在分词 )；淌；使)慢慢走；缓慢移动 | |
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cuff
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| n.袖口；手铐；护腕；vt.用手铐铐；上袖口 | |
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cone
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| n.圆锥体，圆锥形东西，球果 | |
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accurately
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| adv.准确地，精确地 | |
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tuned
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| adj.调谐的，已调谐的v.调音( tune的过去式和过去分词 )；调整；（给收音机、电视等）调谐；使协调 | |
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hiss
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| v.发出嘶嘶声；发嘘声表示不满 | |
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intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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unison
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| n.步调一致，行动一致 | |
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unnaturally
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| adv.违反习俗地；不自然地；勉强地；不近人情地 | |
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withdrawn
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| vt.收回；使退出；vi.撤退，退出 | |
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discrete
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| adj.个别的，分离的，不连续的 | |
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habitual
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| adj.习惯性的；通常的，惯常的 | |
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precocious
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| adj.早熟的；较早显出的 | |
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smear
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| v.涂抹；诽谤，玷污；n.污点；诽谤，污蔑 | |
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enquiring
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| a.爱打听的，显得好奇的 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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havens
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| n.港口，安全地方( haven的名词复数 )v.港口，安全地方( haven的第三人称单数 ) | |
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auto
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| n.(=automobile)(口语)汽车 | |
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casually
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| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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hovering
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| 鸟( hover的现在分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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vanilla
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| n.香子兰，香草 | |
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starched
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| adj.浆硬的，硬挺的，拘泥刻板的v.把（衣服、床单等）浆一浆( starch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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hueless
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amber
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| n.琥珀；琥珀色；adj.琥珀制的 | |
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stertorous
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| adj.打鼾的 | |
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42
bleak
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| adj.(天气)阴冷的；凄凉的；暗淡的 | |
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malignant
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| adj.恶性的，致命的；恶意的，恶毒的 | |
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whine
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| v.哀号，号哭；n.哀鸣 | |
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45
forgone
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| v.没有也行，放弃( forgo的过去分词 ) | |
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toad
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| n.蟾蜍，癞蛤蟆 | |
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bugs
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| adj.疯狂的，发疯的n.窃听器( bug的名词复数 )；病菌；虫子；[计算机]（制作软件程序所产生的意料不到的）错误 | |
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48
bruise
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| n.青肿，挫伤；伤痕；vt.打青；挫伤 | |
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49
strings
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| n.弦 | |
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50
exalted
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| adj.(地位等)高的，崇高的；尊贵的，高尚的 | |
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51
enchants
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| 使欣喜，使心醉( enchant的第三人称单数 )； 用魔法迷惑 | |
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kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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