out of the bakery with the bread her mother wanted.
She did not know what to do. Already bewildered
by being thirteen and just that summer a woman,
she now had to walk past the American.
But she did fine. Went by and around the corner
with style, not noticing me. Almost perfect.
At the last instant could not resist darting a look
down at her new breasts. Often I go back
to that dip of her head when people talk
about this one or that one of the great beauties.
Anonymous submission.
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would notbe made so fine. The Bengal tiger would notbe fashioned so miraculously well. The poor womenat the fountain are laughing together betweenthe suffering they have known and the awfulnessin their future, smiling and…
It is not the body that finds love.What leads us there is the body.What is not love provokes it.What is not love quenches it.Love lays hold of everything we know.The passions which are called lovealso change everything to a newnessat first. Passion is clearly the pathbut does not bring us to love.It opens the castle…
past my stone hut and onto the mountain to graze.She turned twelve last year and it was legalfor the father to take her out of school. She knowsher life is over. The sadness makes her fine,makes me happy. Her old red sweater makesthe whole valley ring, makes my solitude gleam.I watch from hiding for her…
Stopped, remembering. Stood lookingout at bright moonlight on concrete.
or beauty. But also inthat truth may be told only so.Those who, admirably, refuseto falsify (as those who will notrisk pretensions) are excludedfrom saying even so much.Degas said he didn’t paintwhat he saw, but whatwould enable them to seethe thing he had.
The fish are dreadful. They are brought upthe mountain in the dawn most days, beautifuland alien and cold from night under the sea,the grand rooms fading from their flat eyes.Soft machinery of the dark, the man thinks,washing them. ‘What can you know of my machinery!’demands the Lord. Sure, the man says quietlyand cuts into them,…
