es gribu negaisu un es gribu tevi

“I cannot write about Damascus, without the jasmine climbing on my fingers. I cannot say Her name, without my mouth getting overcrowded with apricot drink, blackberries and quince.”

“She floated in an unreal innocence….”

“You—you strange—you almost unearthly thing!—I love you as my own flesh.”

“You and I know each other in our bones,”

“What settles is powdered like the morning after an evening’s unexpected snow when one looks out to find a nothingness that’s there: the street, the car, the yard having vanished beneath a pale quiet, falling. And across, where the park once was, lone footprints appear even lonelier as they trek away, searching for some lost yesteryear, a dear friend missed.”

—now bounded, now immeasurable, it is alternately stone in you and star.

“His heart danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide.”

“Because we both loved the color of October, soaked in wine,”

“Still, love is the impulse from which poetry springs. Even dark poems. Especially dark poems. To know the worst and write in spite of that, that must be love.”

“And because I am so full of longing for you at the moment I am going to end this letter because of the pain I have at knowing that [being together] simply cannot be. I send you my love, a dozen sweet kisses, hug you tenderly in my heart”

“Today I wanted to paint nakedness —”

“Oh how I would love to see you and speak to you now. I feel as if I should be with you at this moment. To know that I can’t be yours depresses me terribly and I am very upset by it.”

“And I wish you were not so far away—and would take me out into the night—way out there in the dark blueness—and that the day would never come—or would I like to see the dawn with you—Night seems to mean that I could be close to you—feel your nearness— That if the day came and we were out there—even in the emptiness—and alone — we would be farther apart—would have to be. Goodnight.”

“I like people who dream or talk to themselves interminably; I like them, for they are double. They are here and elsewhere.”

“She is passion embodied, a flower of melodrama in eternal bloom.”

“(What was ‘It interested me’ supposed to mean? A book either knocks you down or raises you up. Otherwise, why pay money for it?)”