Par Lagerkvist: "The Sibyl"

"In a little house on the mountain slopes above Delphi lived an old women and her witless son. The house consisted of a single room; one wall was the mountainside itself, and always dripped with moisture. It was not really a house at all but a ramshackle hut which the herdsmen had built for themselves. It stood alone away up in the wild mountain, high above the the buildings of the city and the sacred precincts of the temple. The woman seldom left the house, her son never. He sat within, in the half light, smiling to himself as he had always done; he was now well into middle age and his lank hair had begun to turn gray. But his face was untouched; it was as it had always been, without any real features in its beardless, downy childishness, only that queer perpetual smile. The old women's face was furrowed and austere, and swarthy, as if it had been touched by fire, her eyes had the look of eyes that have seen god."

'The Sibyl' Par Lagerkvist 1956 trans. Naomi Walford