书摘 A Rose for Emily

We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew

that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will.

Thus she passed from generation to generation--dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse.

and the very old men--some in their brushed Confederate uniforms--on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs,

believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottle-neck of the most recent decade of years

The violence of breaking down the door seemed to fill this room with pervading dust

For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the profound and fleshless grin. The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded him