“One clear night while the others slept, I climbedthe stairs to the roof of the house and under a skystrewn with stars I gazed at the sea, at the spread of it,the rolling crests of it raked by the wind, becominglike bits of lace tossed in the air. I stood in the longwhispering night, waiting for something, a sign, the approachof a distant light, and I imagined you coming closer,the dark waves of your hair mingling with the sea,and the dark became desire, and desire the arriving light.The nearness, the momentary warmth of you as I stoodon that lonely height watching the slow swells of the seabreak on the shore and turn briefly into glass and disappear...Why did I believe you would come out of nowhere? Why with allthat the world offers would you come only because I was here?”

“She stood beside me for years, or was it a moment? I cannot remember. Maybe I loved her, maybe I didn't. There was a house, and then no house. There were trees, but none remain. When no one remembers, what is there? You, whose moments are gone, who drift like smoke in the afterlife, tell me something, tell me anything.”

“The Coming of LightEven this late it happens:the coming of love, the coming of light. You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves, stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows, sending up warm bouquets of air.Even this late the bones of the body shine and tomorrow’s dust flares into breath.”

“Those hours given over to basking in the glow of an imaginedfuture, of being carried away in streams of promise by a love ora passion so strong that one felt altered forever and convincedthat even the smallest particle of the surrounding world wascharged with purpose of impossible grandeur; ah, yes, andone would look up into the trees and be thrilled by the wind-loosened river of pale, gold foliage cascading down and by thehigh, melodious singing of countless birds; those moments, somany and so long ago, still come back, but briefly, like firefliesin the perfumed heat of summer night.”

“No voice comes from outer space, from the folds of dust and carpets of wind to tell us that this is the way it was meant to happen, that if only we knew how long the ruins would last we would never complain.”

“Even this late it happens:the coming of love, the coming of light.”

“When I walkI part the airand alwaysthe air moves into fill the spaceswhere my body's been.”