living with the black dog

Beings which reproduce themselves are distinct from one another, and those reproduced are likewise distinct from each other, just as they are distinct from their parents. Each being is distinct from all others. His birth, his death, the events of his life may have an interest for others, but he alone is directly concerned in them. He is born alone. He dies alone. Between one being and another, there is a gulf, a discontinuity.

You many unassaulted cities: Have you never yearned for the enemy? Yearned that he might beseige you for long irresolute years, until in hopelessness and hunger you receive him? He extends like the land beyond your walls, and he knows he can hold out longer.

Often when I imagine you your wholeness cascades into many shapes. You run like a herd of luminous deer and I am dark, I am forest.

You, my own deep soul, trust me. I will not betray you. My blood is alive with many voices telling me that I am made of longing. What mystery breaks over me now? In its shadow I come into life. For the first time I am alone with you— you, my power to feel.

On pious images pale cheeks blush with a strange fire. Your senses uncoil like snakes awakened by the beat of the tambourine. Then suddenly you're left all alone with your body that can't love you and your will that can't save you. But now, like a whispering in dark streets, rumors of God run through your dark blood.

Only God escapes his will—a God he loves with a high hatred for being so out of reach.

He was the kind of man who turns to bring gorth the meaning of an age that wants to end. He lifts its whole weight and heaves it into the chasm of his heart.

I love you, gentlest of Ways, who ripened us as we wrestled with you. You, the great homesickness we could never shake, you, the forest that always surrounded us, you, the song we sang in every silence, you, dark net threading through us, You began yourself so greatly on that day when you began us-- and we have so ripened in your sunlight, spreading far and firmly planted-- that now in all people, angles, madonnas, you can decide: the work is done. Let your hand rest on the rim of Heaven now and mutely bear the darkness we bring over you.

I want to die. Leave me alone. I feel I am almost there— where the great terror can dismember me.

I am the dream you are dreaming. When you want to awaken, I am that wanting.

All creation holds its breath, listening with me, because, to hear you, I keep silent.

At my senses' horizon you appear hesitantly, like scattered islands.

You are the partner of her loneliness, the unspeaking center of her monologues. With each disclosure you encompass more and she stretches beyond what limits her, to hold you.

Because once someone dared to want you, I know that we, too, may want you.

Our hands shake as we try to construct you, block on block. But you, cathedral we dimply perceive-- who can bring you to completion? What's Rome? It crumbled. What is the world? We are destroying it before your towers can taper into spires, before we can assemble your face from the piles of mosaic. Yet sometimes in dreams I take in your whole expanse, from its deepest beginnings up to the rooftop's glittering ridge. And then I see: it is my mind that will fashion and set the last pieces in place.

You are not dead yet, it's not too late to open your depths by plunging into them and drink in the life that reveals itself quietly there.

You see, I want a lot. Maybe I want it all: the darkness of each endless fall, the shimmering light of each ascent. So many are alive who don't seem to care. Casual, easy, they move in the world as though untouched But you take pleasure in the faces of those who know they thirst. You cherish those who grip you for survival.