“...a young nurse is standing close behind me wondering whether she is being drawn by my power or her charity.”

“You have the lovers,they are nameless, their histories only for each other,and you have the room, the bed, and the windows.Pretend it is a ritual.Unfurl the bed, bury the lovers, blacken the windows,let them live in that house for a generation or two.No one dares disturb them.Visitors in the corridor tip-toe past the long closed door,they listen for sounds, for a moan, for a song:nothing is heard, not even breathing.You know they are not dead,you can feel the presence of their intense love.Your children grow up, they leave you,they have become soldiers and riders.Your mate dies after a life of service.Who knows you? Who remembers you?But in your house a ritual is in progress:It is not finished: it needs more people.One day the door is opened to the lover's chamber.The room has become a dense garden,full of colours, smells, sounds you have never known.The bed is smooth as a wafer of sunlight,in the midst of the garden it stands alone.In the bed the lovers, slowly and deliberately and silently,perform the act of love.Their eyes are closed,as tightly as if heavy coins of flesh lay on them.Their lips are bruised with new and old bruises.Her hair and his beard are hopelessly tangled.When he puts his mouth against her shouldershe is uncertain whether her shoulderhas given or received the kiss.All her flesh is like a mouth.He carries his fingers along her waistand feels his own waist caressed.She holds him closer and his own arms tighten around her.She kisses the hand besider her mouth.It is his hand or her hand, it hardly matters,there are so many more kisses.You stand beside the bed, weeping with happiness,you carefully peel away the sheetsfrom the slow-moving bodies.Your eyes filled with tears, you barely make out the lovers,As you undress you sing out, and your voice is magnificentbecause now you believe it is the first human voiceheard in that room.The garments you let fall grow into vines.You climb into bed and recover the flesh.You close your eyes and allow them to be sewn shut.You create an embrace and fall into it.There is only one moment of pain or doubtas you wonder how many multitudes are lying beside your body,but a mouth kisses and a hand soothes the moment away.”

“My heart sings of your longing for me, and my thoughts climb down to marvel at your mercy. I do not fear as you gather up my days. Your name is the sweetness of time, and you carry me close into the night, speaking consolations, drawing down lights from the sky, saying, See how the night has no terrors for one who remembers the name.”

“Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river You can hear the boats go by You can spend the night beside her And you know that she's half crazy But that's why you want to be there And she feeds you tea and oranges That come all the way from China And just when you mean to tell her That you have no love to give her Then she gets you on her wavelength And she lets the river answer”

“When you call me close to tell me your body is not beautiful I want to summon the eyes and hidden mouths of stone and light and water to testify against you. ”

“The Dream""O I had such a wonderful dream, she said. I dreamed you made love to me.At last, he said to himself, the spirithas taken up some of the heavy work.”

“When I have not rage or sorrow, and you depart from me, then I am most afraid. When the belly is full, and the mind has its sayings, then I fear for my soul; I rush to you as a child at night breaks into its parents' room. Do not forget me in my satisfaction. When the heart grins at itself, the world is destroyed. And I am found alone with the husks and the shells. Then the dangerous moment comes: I am too great to ask for help. I have other hopes. I legislate from the fortress of my disappointments, with a set jaw. Overthrow this even terror with a sweet remembrance: when I was with you, when my soul delighted you, when I was what you wanted. My heart sings of your longing for me, and my thoughts climb down to marvel at your mercy. I do not fear as you gather up my days. Your name is the sweetness of time, and you carry me close into the night, speaking consolations, drawing down lights from the sky, saying, See how the night has no terror for one who remembers the Name.”