I have come to see it as that.
As a steam of cries.
So much pain in the world – the formless
grief of the body, whose language
is hunger-
And in the hall, the boxed roses:
what they mean
is chaos. Then begins
the terrible charity of marriage,
husband and wife
climing the green hill in gold light
until there is no hill,
only a flat plain stopped by the sky.
Here is my hand, he said.
But that was long ago.
Here is my hand that will not harm you.
I met my love under an orange treeor was it an acacia treeor was he not my love?I read this, then I dreamed this:can waking take back what happened to me?Bells of San Miguelringing in the distancehis hair in the shadows blond-whiteI dreamed this,does that mean it didn’t happen?Does it have to happen in the…
I feel only bitter sadness for us,the builders, the planers of wood,because I have been lookingsteadily at these elmsand seen the process that createsthe writhing, stationary treeis torment, and have understoodit will make no forms but twisted forms.
two pine boughs, their fine needlesnow etched onto the radiant surfaceand above thishigh, feathery heaven—Smell the air. That is the smell of the white pine,most intense when the wind blows through itand the sound it makes equally strange,like the sound of the wind in a movie—Shadows moving. The ropesmaking the sound they make. What you…
thinking such things, producingthe tiresome outward signs; the manpointedly weeding an entire forest,the woman limping, refusing to change clothesor wash her hair.Do you suppose I careif you speak to one another?But I mean you to knowI expected better of two creatureswho were given minds: if notthat you would actually care for each otherat least that…
Slowly he lifts his head; a womanappears, carrying roses.Her face floats to the surface of the mirror,marked with the green spokes of rose stems.It is a formof suffering: then always the transparent pageraised to the window until its veins emergeas words finally filled with ink.And I am meant to understandwhat binds them togetheror to the…
who was nearly a god.Patroclus resembled him; they worethe same armor.Always in these friendshipsone serves the other, one is less than the other:the hierarchyis always apparant, though the legendscannot be trusted–their source is the survivor,the one who has been abandoned.What were the Greek ships on firecompared to this loss?In his tent, Achillesgrieved with his whole…
