“The heart lies to itself because it must.”

“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.”

“We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must havethe stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthlessfurnace of this world. To make injustice the onlymeasure of our attention is to praise the Devil.”

“We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.”

“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.”

“I dream of lost vocabularies that might express some of what we no longer can.”