1 We shall never leave this house," we said, "nor let it be taken from us.
2 The leaves rustle over our head, black against the last gold of the sky.
3 Those who had brought us departed, leaving us to the two Judges who stood in a corner of the room.
4 Dare not choose in your minds the work you would like to do when you leave the Home of the Students.
5 The leaves had edges of silver that trembled and rippled like a river of green and fire flowing high above us.
6 The shadows of leaves fall upon their arms, as they spread the branches apart, but their shoulders are in the sun.
7 Then our body, losing all sense, rolled over and over on the moss, dry leaves in our tunic, in our hair, in our face.
8 Our arms stretched out of their own will, and our body whirled and whirled, till it raised a wind to rustle through the leaves of the bushes.
9 Tomorrow, in the full light of day, we shall take our box, and leave our tunnel open, and walk through the streets to the Home of the Scholars.
10 It is easy to leave the Theatre; when the candles are blown out and the Actors come onto the stage, no eyes can see us as we crawl under our seat and under the cloth of the tent.
11 But our hand which followed the track, as we crawled, clung to the iron as if it would not leave it, as if the skin of our hand were thirsty and begging of the metal some secret fluid beating in its coldness.
12 We went on, cutting through the branches, and it was as if we were swimming through a sea of leaves, with the bushes as waves rising and falling and rising around us, and flinging their green sprays high to the treetops.