“Suddenly this defeat.This rain.The blues gone grayAnd the browns gone grayAnd yellowA terrible amber.In the cold streetsYour warm body.In whatever roomYour warm body.Among all the peopleYour absenceThe people who are alwaysNot you.I have been easy with treesToo long.Too familiar with mountains.Joy has been a habit.NowSuddenlyThis rain.”

“You have grudged the very fire in your house because the wood cost overmuch!" he cried. "You have grudged life. To live cost overmuch, and you have refused to pay the price. Your life has been like a cabin where the fire is out and there are no blankets on the floor." He signaled to a slave to fill his glass, which he held aloft. "But I have lived. And I have been warm with life as you have never been warm. It is true, you shall live long. But the longest nights are the cold nights when a man shivers and lies awake. My nights have been short, but I have slept warm”

“Waking At NightThe blue river is grey at morningand evening. There is twilightat dawn and dusk. I lie in the darkwondering if this quiet in me nowis a beginning or an end.”

“DuendeI can't remember her name.It's not as though I've been in bedwith that many women.The truth is I can't even rememberher face. I kind of know how strongher thighs were, and her beauty.But what I won't forgetis the way she tore openthe barbecued chicken with her hands,and wiped the grease on her breasts.”

“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.”

“The Forgotten Dialect of the HeartHow astonishing it is that language can almost mean,and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the wordsget it all wrong. We say bread and it means accordingto which nation. French has no word for home,and we have no word for strict pleasure. A peoplein northern India is dying out because their ancienttongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lostvocabularies that might express some of whatwe no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts wouldfinally explain why the couples on their tombsare smiling. And maybe not. When the thousandsof mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated,they seemed to be business records. But what if theyare poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelveEthiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper,as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind's labor.Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with boltsof long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundredpitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are whatmy body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are thisdesire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan scriptis not language but a map. What we feel most hasno name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds.”

“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.”