First Sentence

"After the exercises I stood in the muddy field (it had rained at dawn) and felt the dark wool of my gown lap up the heat and din of noon, and at that instant, while the graduates ran with cries toward asterisks of waiting parents and the sun hung like an animal's tongue from a sickened blue maw, I heard the last stray call of a bugle-single, lost, unconnected-and in one moment I grew suddenly old."