where you're not (buildup)

AS IF NOTHING had happened nothing happened anyway all around him
in his travail birds hung in the air sleeping alongside sidelong in the windings the wainscots nothing anywhere any of it anything he looked and looked again he didn't look see didn't look only because of the error and impossibility of looking he stood and didn't look only stood understood stood under as though a shower a rainfall as though a magic thing might descend though all the while none of this happened and he was incapable even of knowing that there was anything to happen there in the place where no trees grew no birds flew where the trails ran out into nothing where even the doors that were not doors anyway were closed to the room that did not was not could not was not known and its unknown was unknown there was where he was not had not grown did not exist there was where a hole was in the centre and he knew with no possibility of knowing that there was something there where the pathways did not seem to lead