We Bear The Sole, Relentless Tenderness.

Between Lips And Lips There Are Cities Of Great Ash And Moist Summit, Drops Of When And How, Vague Comings And Goings: Between Lips And Lips As Along A Shore Of Sand And Glass The Wind Passes.

Sonnet Xxv Before I Loved You, Love, Nothing Was My Own: I Wavered Through The Streets, Among Objects: Nothing Mattered Or Had A Name: The World Was Made Of Air, Which Waited. I Knew Rooms Full Of Ashes, Tunnels Where The Moon Lived, Rough Warehouses That Growled 'get Lost', Questions That Insisted In The Sand. Everything Was Empty, Dead, Mute, Fallen Abandoned, And Decayed: Inconceivably Alien, It All Belonged To Someone Else - To No One: Till Your Beauty And Your Poverty Filled The Autumn Plentiful With Gifts.

The Bare Earth, Plantless, Waterless, Is An Immense Puzzle. In The Forests Or Beside Rivers Everything Speaks To Humans. The Desert Does Not Speak. I Could Not Comprehend Its Tongue; Its Silence...

We Open The Halves Of A Miracle, And A Clotting Of Acids Brims Into The Starry Divisions: Creation's Original Juices, Irreducible, Changeless, Alive: So The Freshness Lives On

This Time Is Difficult. Wait For Me. We Will Live It Out Vividly. Give Me Your Small Hand: We Will Rise And Suffer, We Will Feel, We Will Rejoice. We Are Once More The Pair Who Lived In Bristling Places, In Harsh Nests In The Rock. This Time Is Difficult. Wait For Me With A Basket, With A Shovel, With Your Shoes And Your Clothes. Now We Need Each Other, Not Only For The Carnations' Sake, Not Only To Look For Honey — We Need Our Hands To Wash With, To Make Fire.