“The master said You must write what you see.But what I see does not move me.The master answered Change what you see.”

“To raise the veil.To see what you're saying goodbye to.”

“Without thinking, I knelt in the grass, like someone meaning to pray. When I tried to stand again, I couldn't move,my legs were utterly rigid. Does grief change you like that?Through the birches, I could see the pond.The sun was cutting small white holes in the water.I got up finally; I walked down to the pond. I stood there, brushing the grass from my skirt, watching myself,like a girl after her first loverturning slowly at the bathroom mirror, naked, looking for a sign.But nakedness in women is always a pose.I was not transfigured. I would never be free. ”

“Why love what you will lose?There is nothing else to love.”

“Lived to see you throwingMe aside. That foughtlike netted fish inside me. Saw you throbbingIn my syrups. Saw you sleep. And lived to seeThat all flushed downThe refuse. Done?It lives in me.You live in me. Malignant.Love, you ever want me, don’t.”

“Gretel in Darkness:This is the world we wanted.All who would have seen us deadare dead. I hear the witch's crybreak in the moonlight through a sheetof sugar: God rewards.Her tongue shrivels into gas....Now, far from women's armsAnd memory of women, in our father's hutwe sleep, are never hungry.Why do I not forget?My father bars the door, bars harmfrom this house, and it is years.No one remembers. Even you, my brother,summer afternoons you look at me as thoughyou meant to leave,as though it never happened.But I killed for you. I see armed firs,the spires of that gleaming kiln--Nights I turn to you to hold mebut you are not there.Am I alone? Spieshiss in the stillness, Hanselwe are there still, and it is real, real,that black forest, and the fire in earnest.”

“What was difficultwas the travel, which,on arrival, is forgotten.”