It starts with the crows, with the sounds of glass clattering, like the clamoring of some grim battle shaken from his recollection, as they now appear, battered and black, coming their dark way over and in the wheatfields, trampling the hot air, making night of day, eyes fixed to the ground on something forbidden, a hundred lives of earth, all the darkness of that time.
Vincent paints them black, as leaders of a congregation from a church that cannot exist. Who commends them to rule with the will of high priests, anyway? They pray with their wings, their guts are swelled with souls, like bellies of burned-out coal, always ready, always secret, born to live like brutes. And no matter how many there are of them, without exit or direction, they disappear… with only Vincent to fathom why they visited — here.
