A Handful Of Words From A Handful Of Dust

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For a month now he had lived

in a world suddenly bereft of order.

It was as though the whole reasonable

and decent constitution of things,

the sum of all he had experienced

or learned to expect, were an inconspicuous,

inconsiderable object mislaid somewhere

on the dressing table.

No outrageous circumstance in which

he found himself, no new mad thing

brought to his notice, could add a jot

to the all-encompassing chaos

that shrieked about his ears.

Evelyn Waugh

(1934)

A Handful of Dust 

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