Anna

devil’s advocate

Call me by your name (2017)

By Berber Theunissen

STEVIE NICKS circa 1977

— Denise Levertov, from The Complete Poems of Denise Levertov; “August Daybreak,”

©Tim Walker, Dreamscapes at The Bowes Museum

— Empirical: IV, Lisa Gorton

‘You are scarred,  With broken lines -  Sultry lines of passion.  There are grosteques in you,  Like forests after fire.’]

I smoothed the feathers of my heart afraid to grow frail and hysterical. I wanted the company of cold people who would never touch me.’]

‘The setting sun looks terribly like blood. The hovering swarm has nothing to forgive. Your voice petitions the indifferent night: “I don’t know how to die yet. Let me live.”’]

‘There are moments when the body is as numinous  as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.  Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings,’]

on the shore of my dream we don’t struggle                          so much. the moon pulls                more fiercely, yes, so that      our blood rises,            yes, but we still manage                      to speak                                 in low voices while the ocean sends cellophane             fingers                   to wrap around our ankles, intent on dragging us awake.

A lovely summer evening in June.

— Charlotte Brontë, from Jane Eyre