“We cannot know his legendary headwith eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torsois still suffused with brilliance from inside,like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,gleams in all its power. Otherwisethe curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor coulda smile run through the placid hips and thighsto that dark center where procreation flared.Otherwise this stone would seem defacedbeneath the translucent cascade of the shouldersand would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:would not, from all the borders of itself,burst like a star: for here there is no placethat does not see you. You must change your life.”

“For here there is no placethat does not see you. You must change your life.”

“If the confident animal coming toward ushad a mind like ours,the change in him would startle us.But to him his own being is endless,undefined, and without regardfor his condition: clear,like his eyes. Where we see future,he sees all, and himselfin all, made whole for always.”

“But not you, O girl, nor yet his mother,stretched his eyebrows so fierce with expectation.Not for your mouth, you who hold him now,did his lips ripen into these fervent contours.Do you really think your quiet footstepscould have so convulsed him, you who move like dawn wind?True, you startled his heart; but older terrorsrushed into him with that first jolt to his emotions.Call him . . . you'll never quite retrieve him from those dark consorts.Yes, he wants to, he escapes; relieved, he makes a homein your familiar heart, takes root there and begins himself anew.But did he ever begin himself?”

“Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don't know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better.”

“His gaze is from the passing of barsso exhausted, that it doesn't hold a thing anymore.For him, it's as if there were thousands of barsand behind the thousands of bars no world.The sure stride of lithe, powerful steps,that around the smallest of circles turns,is like a dance of pure energy about a center,in which a great will stands numbed.Only occasionally, without a sound, do the covers of the eyes slide open—. An image rushes in,goes through the tensed silence of the frame—only to vanish, forever, in the heart.- The Panther”

“How can I keep my soul in me, so thatit doesn’t touch your soul? How can I raiseit high enough, past you, to other things?I would like to shelter it, among remotelost objects, in some dark and silent placethat doesn’t resonate when your depths resound.Yet everything that touches us, me and you,takes us together like a violin’s bow,which draws one voice out of two separate strings.Upon what instrument are we two spanned?And what musician holds us in his hand?Oh sweetest song.- Love Song”