[poetry]

he woke toward the morning with the fire down to coals and walked out to the road. everything was alight. as if the lost sun were returning at last. the snow orange and quivering. a forest fire making its way along the tinderbox ridges above them, flaring and shimmering against the overcast like the northern lights. cold as it was he stood there a long time. the color of it moved something in him long forgotten. make a list.
recite a litany.
remember.

dark of the invisible moon. the nights now only slightly less black. by day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp.

it's the many hundreds of passages like this that make mccarthy's 'the road' so absolutely breathtaking.