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Pavalatchie the Dwarf
God made me Atlas-footed, rooted in rock, a thing of dwindle and the goblin's stoop, my toes dug free from a vein of coal, my bones lopped off before the winds could lift them. One night the devil came in a dark cloak, as a cat prancing, reeking a cat's musk, puffing smoke and sweet words till the place stank. Grumbling, grimacing as he crossed my doorstep, where green things grow until I wither them, and singing my name in the splash of his prancing. I have strong fingers: they make no cables stronger: and my shoulder's a derrick, for all my dwarfness. I took that devil by the rump and the scruff of his neck and pitched him-cleft hoofs, brimstone and all- over my doorsill, over the whisper of green, back into the night and the flicker of comets. Hunked on a gnarl of a bench in my hut without mirrors, my brow on my knuckles, the twist of my thigh my horizon and the stench turning sweetness;- I heard that devil down each slow inch as he pranced ten thousand miles, calling my name in his wake, in the spill of his prancing, "Pavalatchie! Pavalatchie!" And I hungered and withered the green on my doorstep.