For a moment the mother stood still, almost
unbreathing, but with composed face.
Paramedics were called and when they arrived they found Chevaze McGregor carrying the
unbreathing boy in his arms.
And elsewhere after Lydia and Tom share a passionate kiss, "He drew away, white,
unbreathing. Only, in his blue eyes, was something of himself concentrated" (47).
The poem concludes with a return to the third-person observer's blank verse frame, amid the "boundless snows" and "wide
unbreathing calm" (ll.
"These things I have--a withered hand--/ foetor, sweat, the stench of stale oranges, / an undisturbed,
unbreathing flame, // and tiny sky creatures buried under the snow.
From the lips that moved not and
unbreathing frame, Like cavern'd winds the hollow accents came.
--the dark ajar, the rocks breaking with light, an undisturbed,
unbreathing flame colorless, sparkless, freely fed on straw, and, lulled within, a family of pets, --and looked and looked our infant sight away.
Still, Eastlake manipulates the narrative so that "here" for the reader is always Indian Country, while Alex is always "there"--until at last he returns
unbreathing.
(29.) I comment obliquely on "Shakespeare and the Exorcists," Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988): 94-128, where Stephen Greenblatt discusses Hermione's rebirth: "the audience accepts the fiction that Hermione is an
unbreathing statue in order to experience the wonder of her resurrection" (124).
--the dark ajar, the rocks breaking with light, an undisturbed,
unbreathing flame, colorless, sparkless, freely fed on straw, and, lulled within, a family with pets, --and looked and looked our infant sight away.
Motionless, Awash, metaphysically undone in that silvered and
Unbreathing medium.