His gaze shifted to the left. As the cloud began to pass, a long slim lath of sunlight burned silver on the water --

A plain, flawless sheer as foil to the serried margins. His eyes dazzled.

--Fire on the water. White.

Minutes passed while he stared. The brilliance was hypnotic. He could not take his eyes away. His spirit yielded, melted into light. In the molten sheen memories and objects overlapped. Smokestacks fused into palings flickering in silence by. Pale laths grew grey, turned dusky, contracted and in the swimming dimness, he saw sparse teeth that gnawed upon a lip; and ladders on the ground turned into hasty fingers pressing on a thigh and again smokestacks. Straight in air they stood a moment, only to fall on silvered cardboard coruscating brilliance. And he heard the rubbing on a wash-board and the splashing suds, smelled again the acrid soap and a voice speaking in words that opened like the bands of a burnishing silver accordion -- Brighter than day . . . Brighter . . . Sin melted into light . . .

Henry Roth Call it Sleep