FALLING FAINTLY THROUGH THE UNIVERSE

I adore the final paragraph of James Joyce’s beautiful short story The Dead, so loved in all of literature, soft as the falling snow itself, loved by my husband, who reads it to me often. Such an extraordinary film too—John Huston’s last, starring the wonderful Anjelica Huston. Love, Susie x

Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, further westwards, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling too upon every part of the lonely churchyard where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

From The Dead by James Joyce