LA RICHESSE DU MONDE

There’s another woman in me. I’m scared to death of her. It’s her that fell in love with that man. I wanted to hate you and I couldn’t. I’m real now, I’m whole.

Sometimes I love him so much I can hardly stand it. Sometimes it felt like the only purpose in her life was to hurry toward him, and sometimes it felt like the only purpose was to hurry away. And isn’t it like that for everyone? she asked.

How can I explain to you, my happiness, my golden wonderful happiness, how much I am all yours — with all my memories, poems, outbursts, inner whirlwinds? Or explain that I cannot write a word without hearing how you will pronounce it — and can’t recall a single trifle I’ve lived through without regret — so sharp! — that we haven’t lived through it together — whether it’s the most, the most personal, intransmissible — or only some sunset or other at the bend of a road — you see what I mean, my happiness?

He understands that he's in a bad way; that he's got to stop thinking about her; that he'll never stop thinking about her; that nothing can ever come of it; that his life will be harmed; that harm is attractive to him; that he'll never return to school; that he will disappoint his parents and lose his girlfriend; that none of this matters to him; that what matters is the hope of seeing once more the phantom lady who will look harshly at him and turn away; that he is weak, foolish, frivolous; that such words have no meaning for him; that he has entered a world of dark love, from which there is no way out.

We live through myriads of seconds, yet it is always one, just one, that casts our entire inner world into turmoil, the second when (as Stendhal has described it) the internal inflorescence, already steeped in every kind of fluid, condenses and crystallizes--a magical second, like the moment of generation, and like that moment concealed in the warm interior of the individual life, invisible, untouchable, beyond the reach of feeling, a secret experienced alone. No algebra of the mind can calculate it, no alchemy of premonition divine it, and it can seldom perceive itself.

They skirted past acres of ocean in a beeline for one clear disc of lake, the only one on the whole island--all that land, and they headed for one tiny hole in it. That is what it is to fall in love, he said, there is a world of firm ground but we go for the gap. We aim for vertigo.

One heart is not connected to another through harmony alone. They are, instead, linked deeply through their wounds. Pain linked to pain, fragility to fragility. There is no silence without a cry of grief, no forgiveness without bloodshed, no acceptance without a passage through acute loss. That is what lies at the root of true harmony.

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play *goes on* and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?

The Robber Girl's boots cover the scars on your feet. When you look at these scars, you can see the outline of the journey you made. Sometimes mirrors are maps, and sometimes maps are mirrors. Sometimes scars tell a story, and maybe someday you will tell this story to a lover. The soles of your feet are stories--hidden in the black boots, they shine like mirrors.

Your destination is North. The map you are using is a mirror. You are always pulling the bits out of your bare feet, the pieces of the map that broke off and fell on the ground as the Snow Queen flew overhead in her sleigh. Where you are, where you are coming from, it is impossible to read a map made of paper. If it were that easy then everyone would be a traveler. You have heard of other travelers whose maps are bread crumbs, whose maps are stones, whose maps are the four winds, whose maps are yellow bricks laid one after the other. You read your map with your foot, and behind you somewhere there must be another traveler whose map is the bloody footprints that you are leaving behind.

Part of you is always traveling faster, always traveling ahead. Even when you are moving, it is never fast enough to satisfy that part of you.

Now they both smiled. The sweet, light fragrance of a first youthful, half-unspoken love, with all its intoxicating tenderness, had awoken in them like a dream on which you reflect ironically when you wake, although you really wish for nothing more than to dream it again, to live in the dream. The beautiful dream of young love that ventures only on half-measures, that desires and dares not ask, promises and does not give.

Passing stranger ! you do not know how longingly I look upon you, You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me as of a dream,) I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you, All is recall'd as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured, You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me, I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not yours only nor left my body mine only, You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass, you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return, I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone, I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again, I am to see to it that I do not lose you.

Don't run any more. Quiet. How softly it rains On the roofs of the city. How perfect All things are. Now, for the two of you Waking up in a royal bed by a garret window. For a man and a woman. For one plant divided Into masculine and feminine which longed for each other. Yes, this is my gift to you. Above ashes On a bitter, bitter earth. Above the subterranean Echo of clamorings and vows. So that now at dawn You must be attentive: the tilt of a head, A hand with a comb, two faces in a mirror Are only forever once, even if unremembered, So that you watch what it is, though it fades away, And are grateful every moment for your being. Let that little park with greenish marble busts In the pearl-gray light, under a summer drizzle, Remain as it was when you opened the gate. And the street of tall peeling porticos Which this love of yours suddenly transformed.

Le Lac Ainsi, toujours poussés vers de nouveaux rivages, Dans la nuit éternelle emportés sans retour, Ne pourrons-nous jamais sur l'océan des âges Jeter l'ancre un seul jour ? Ô lac ! l'année à peine a fini sa carrière, Et près des flots chéris qu'elle devait revoir, Regarde ! je viens seul m'asseoir sur cette pierre Où tu la vis s'asseoir ! Tu mugissais ainsi sous ces roches profondes, Ainsi tu te brisais sur leurs flancs déchirés, Ainsi le vent jetait l'écume de tes ondes Sur ses pieds adorés. Un soir, t'en souvient-il ? nous voguions en silence ; On n'entendait au loin, sur l'onde et sous les cieux, Que le bruit des rameurs qui frappaient en cadence Tes flots harmonieux. Tout à coup des accents inconnus à la terre Du rivage charmé frappèrent les échos ; Le flot fut attentif, et la voix qui m'est chère Laissa tomber ces mots : " Ô temps ! suspends ton vol, et vous, heures propices ! Suspendez votre cours : Laissez-nous savourer les rapides délices Des plus beaux de nos jours ! " Assez de malheureux ici-bas vous implorent, Coulez, coulez pour eux ; Prenez avec leurs jours les soins qui les dévorent ; Oubliez les heureux. " Mais je demande en vain quelques moments encore, Le temps m'échappe et fuit ; Je dis à cette nuit : Sois plus lente ; et l'aurore Va dissiper la nuit. " Aimons donc, aimons donc ! de l'heure fugitive, Hâtons-nous, jouissons ! L'homme n'a point de port, le temps n'a point de rive ; Il coule, et nous passons ! " Temps jaloux, se peut-il que ces moments d'ivresse, Où l'amour à longs flots nous verse le bonheur, S'envolent loin de nous de la même vitesse Que les jours de malheur ? Eh quoi ! n'en pourrons-nous fixer au moins la trace ? Quoi ! passés pour jamais ! quoi ! tout entiers perdus ! Ce temps qui les donna, ce temps qui les efface, Ne nous les rendra plus ! Éternité, néant, passé, sombres abîmes, Que faites-vous des jours que vous engloutissez ? Parlez : nous rendrez-vous ces extases sublimes Que vous nous ravissez ? Ô lac ! rochers muets ! grottes ! forêt obscure ! Vous, que le temps épargne ou qu'il peut rajeunir, Gardez de cette nuit, gardez, belle nature, Au moins le souvenir ! Qu'il soit dans ton repos, qu'il soit dans tes orages, Beau lac, et dans l'aspect de tes riants coteaux, Et dans ces noirs sapins, et dans ces rocs sauvages Qui pendent sur tes eaux. Qu'il soit dans le zéphyr qui frémit et qui passe, Dans les bruits de tes bords par tes bords répétés, Dans l'astre au front d'argent qui blanchit ta surface De ses molles clartés. Que le vent qui gémit, le roseau qui soupire, Que les parfums légers de ton air embaumé, Que tout ce qu'on entend, l'on voit ou l'on respire, Tout dise : Ils ont aimé !

Cain murdered Abel, and blood cried out from the earth; the house fell on Job's children, and a voice was induced or provoked into speaking from a whirlwind; and Rachel mourned for her children; and King David for Absalom. The force behind the movement of time is a mourning that will not be comforted. That is why the first event is known to have been an expulsion, and the last is hoped to be a reconciliation and return. So memory pulls is forward, so prophecy is only brilliant memory-- there will be a garden where all of us as one child will sleep in our mother Eve, hopped in her ribs and staved by her spine.