“But anything worth doing is worth doing badly. Like being there by that summer ocean on the other side of the island while love was fading out of her, the stars burning so extravagantly those nights that anyone could tell you they would never last.”

“Failing and Flying"Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.It's the same when love comes to an end,or the marriage fails and people saythey knew it was a mistake, that everybodysaid it would never work. That she was old enough to know better. But anythingworth doing is worth doing badly.Like being there by that summer oceanon the other side of the island whilelove was fading out of her, the stars burning so extravagantly those nights thatanyone could tell you they would never last.Every morning she was asleep in my bedlike a visitation, the gentleness in herlike antelope standing in the dawn mist.Each afternoon I watched her coming backthrough the hot stony field after swimming,the sea light behind her and the huge skyon the other side of that. Listened to herwhile we ate lunch. How can they say the marriage failed? Like the people whocame back from Provence (when it was Provence)and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,but just coming to the end of his triumph.”

“The Abandoned ValleyCan you understand being alone so longyou would go out in the middle of the nightand put a bucket into the wellso you could feel something down theretug at the other end of the rope?”

“A DESCRIPTION OF HAPPINESS IN KOBENHAVN All this windless day snow fellinto the King's Gardenwhere I walked, perfecting and growing old,abandoning one by one everybody:randomly in love with the paradisefurnace of my mind. Now I sit in the dark,dreaming of a marble sunand its strictness. Thisis to tell you I am not coming back.To tell you instead of my private lifeamong people who must wrestle their heartsin order to feel anything, as though it wereunnatural. What I master by daystill lapses in the night. But I go onwith the cargo cult, blindly feeling the snowcome down, learning to flower by tightening.”

“There was no water at my grandfather’swhen I was a kid and would go for itwith two zinc buckets. Down the path,past the cow by the foundation wherethe fine people’s house was beforethey arranged to have it burned down.To the neighbor’s cool well. Wouldcome back with pails too heavy,so my mouth pulled out of shape.I see myself, but from the outside.I keep trying to feel who I was,and cannot. Hear clearly the soundthe bucket made hitting the sidesof the stone well going down,but never the sound of me.”

“The water nymphs who came to Poseidonexplained how little they desired to couplewith the gods. Except to find outwhether it was different, whether there wasa fresh world, another dimension in their loins.In the old Pittsburgh, we dreamed of a city where women read Proust in the original French, and wondered whether we would cross overinto a different joy if we paid a call girla thousand dollars for a night. Or an hour. Would it be different in kind or onlytricks and apparatus? I worried that a great love might make everything else an exile. It turned out that being together at twilight in the olive groves of Umbriadid, indeed, measure everything after that.”

“You will love again, people say. Give it time. Me with time running out. Day after day of the everyday.What they call real life, made of eighth-inch gauge. Newness strutting around as if it were significant.Irony, neatness and rhyme pretending to be poetry. I want to go back to that time after Michiko's deathwhen I cried every day among the trees. To the real.To the magnitude of pain, of being that much alive.”