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Raucous Summer
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core
William Butler Yeats
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
Every time I lifted off a turf, the same thing appeared: a white comma,
curled in the roots of the grass. I picked one up. It had a small ginger
head and tiny legs. Its skin was stretched so tight that it seemed about
to burst at the segments. In the tail I could see the indigo streak of
its  digestive tract. I guessed that it was the larva of a cockchafer,
a  bronze-backed beetle that swarms in early summer. I watched it
twitching for a moment, then I put it in my mouth.
As soon as it broke on my tongue, two sensations hit me like bul-
lets. The first was the taste. It was sweet, creamy, faintly smoky, like
alpine butter. The second was the memory. I knew immediately why I
had guessed it was good to eat. I stood in my garden, sleet drilling into
the back of my neck, remembering.
It had taken me a moment, when I woke, to realize where I was.
Above my head a blue tarpaulin rippled and snapped in the breeze.
I could hear the pumps working, so I must have overslept. I swung my
legs over the edge of the hammock and sat blinking in the bright light,
gazing across the devastated land. The men were already up to their
waists in water, spraying the gravel banks with high-pressure hoses. There
had been some shootings in the night, but I could not see any bodies.
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