The Cracked Kettle

This title comes from an episode in Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary, where the author says in his own voice (in Gerard Hopkins's translation), "After all, no one can ever give the exact measure of his needs, of his thoughts or his sorrows. Human language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when all the time we are longing to move the stars to pity." This piece, however, is not a setting of Flaubert, nor of any text or language.