Into the valley the tears.  A fountain of tears.  Eah tear a perfect oval.  Each tear a glow.  Each tear descending gliding rolling on sand on pebble on jutting rock.  Suddenly the rain bursts.  Lightning for a sharp moment strikes the rock.  Fifty tears flow.  A mound of tears near the rock.  Bubbling burstng rising and then a quick descent. Grr the thunder whispers.  Glisse is the lightning response.  T-T-T flow the tears.  Who has noted this menterie in the picture window of sorrow.  It is a slippery moment of sand and rock of pebbles hardly visible in their ghost-like color.  Fifty tears sliding down approaching each other available to touch to softness to glow to momentary glide.  Glistening is the menteur embedded in the shadow of the rock.  Dressed in white he glides toward the tenth pebble near the 49th tear and laughs as he slips into the fury of the rain in the valley.  It is not for him to stop the tears as they slip past his shivering white garments.  He is silent now.  Motionless.

      The rain has stopped.  Still, the tears are sliding, slipping, shining in their ovals.  They pass the menteur who is motionless, his eyes staring slipping suddenly in an orbit of tears.  From his eyes fifty more tears slip out of the sockets.  He is not unhappy. Tears are not emblems except in their ovalness.  He now no longer feels the slippery cloak of the menteur that is usually in hiding anyway.  He is the master of his tear-ebbing as his tears glide over the sand the pebbles the jutting rock.  Suddenly there is thunder again.  His tears expand.  His sockets fall and he rolling over sand pebbles and rock feels his wheeling  journey will not succeed in making a mountain of tears, his original plan.  His tears are no longer his.  His eyes his sockets have slipped away and now he toppling over sand pebbles and rock hears the lightning purr even as it sharply hisses over and over the monosyllable glisse, and he the true menteur in his white robe swings himself over the jutting rocks.  The view is clear now.  The white of his robe has become a mantle over the sand the pebbles the jutting rock.  And he already having made his final glissade becomes the fifty-first tear so white so oval so not there the illusion of the august menterie.

      The air has changed.  The rain has stopped.  A seagull is sweeping over the valley.  As it glides there is a sound of waves as again fifty tears topple over the sand the pebbles and the jutting rock.  It is quiet again.  Again there will be lightning.  Again there will be thunder, and the menteur will rise again.

      There is a book in the sand.  Its pages are glistening.  Covered with tears, yet ten tears rise above the tear mound.  Each tear a letter, and the word Glissement.  There is distraction in the sand, a final aberration.    

Harriet Zinnes