“You have changed me, a grey-red vegetable with snail-eyes, flesh swollen into turnip, a root pulled from mud.” “Flesh into root, root into flesh, praise be the compost of the world.” “A skin you stuff!” “A wart of meat!” “A bulb of blood!” “Chewing, swelling, very well.” “I have my corners of weeds, I sing my song of roots and noses, my song of dung.” “A hymn! A hymn of dung! Of refuse made radiant!” “Madame, this song offends you! These grunts — you call them lust! This greed — you call it desire! This hunger — you call it holiness!” “If you feed me garbage, I shall sing garbage! If you feed me dung, I shall praise dung! This is my hymn of rot, my hymn of refuse, my hymn of blood-root!” “This… is a hymn.”
