Gustav Klimt Expectation (gold foil) painting

Gustav Klimt Expectation (gold foil) paintingGustav Klimt Death and Life paintingGustav Klimt Danae (detail) painting
Mr. Saladin Chamcha, appalled by the noises emanating from Gibreel Farishta's mouth, fought back with verses of his own. What Farishta heard wafting across the improbable night sky was an old song, too, lyrics by Mr. James Thomson, seventeenhundred to seventeen-forty-eight. ". . . at Heaven's command," Chamcha carolled through lips turned jingoistically redwhiteblue by the cold, "arooooose from out the aaaazure main." Farishta, horrified, sang louder and louder of Japanese shoes, Russian hats, inviolately subcontinental hearts, but could not still Saladin's wild recital: "And guardian aaaaangels sung the strain."
Let's face it: it was impossible for them to have heard one another, much less conversed and also competed thus in song. Accelerating towards the planet, atmosphere roaring around them, how could they? But let's face this, too: they did.
Downdown they hurtled, and the winter cold frosting their eyelashes and