The Body Of Our Saviour Shat But

As Rilke Observed, Love Requires A Progressive Shortening Of The Senses: I Can See You For Miles; I Can Hear You For Blocks, I Can Smell You, Maybe, For A Few Feet, But I Can Only Touch On Contact, Taste As I Devour

The Death Of God Represents Not Only The Realization That Gods Have Never Existed, But The Contention That Such A Belief Is No Longer Even Irrationally Possible: That Neither Reason Nor The Taste And Temper Of The Times Condones It. The Belief Lingers On, Of Course, But It Does So Like Astrology Or A Faith In A Flat Earth.

How Do We Know, Then, When A Code's Been Cracked?when We Are Right?when Do We Know If We Have Even Received A Message? Why, Naturally, When, Upon One Set Of Substitutions, Sense Emerges Like The Outline Under A Rubbing; When A Single Tentative Construal Leads To Several; When All The Sullen Letters Of The Code Cry Team! After Yea! Has Been, By Several Hands, Uncovered.

I Was Struck By The Way In Which Meanings Are Historically Attached To Words: It Is So Accidental, So Remote, So Twisted. A Word Is Like A Schoolgirl's Room--a Complete Mess--so The Great Thing Is To Make Out A Way Of Seeing It All As Ordered, As Right, As Inferred And Following.

So To The Wretched Writer I Should Like To Say That There’s One Body Only Whose Request For Your Caresses Is Not Vulgar, Is Not Unchaste, Untoward, Or Impolite: The Body Of Your Work Itself; For You Must Remember That Your Attentions Will Not Merely Celebrate A Beauty But Create One; That Yours Is Love That Brings It Own Birth With It, Just As Plato Has Declared, And That You Should Therefore Give Up The Blue Things Of This World In Favor Of The Words Which Say Them