strange world

.

The little river twittering in the twilight,

The wan, wondering look of the pale sky,

            This is almost bliss.

And everything shut up and gone to sleep,

All the troubles and anxieties and pain

            Gone under the twilight.

Only the twilight now, and the soft “Sh!” of the river

            That will last forever.

And at last I know my love for you is here,

I can see it all, it is whole like the twilight,

It is large, so large, I could not see it before

Because of the little lights and flickers and interruptions,

             Troubles, anxieties, and pains.

             You are the call and I am the answer,

             You are the wish, and I the fulfillment,

             You are the night, and I the day.

                         What else—it is perfect enough,

                         It is perfectly complete,

                         You and I.

Strange, how we suffer in spite of this!

—D.H. Lawrence 1885 – 1930

Bei Hennef

.

For suppose, and mind it narrowly, that life is simply a shadow bodies cast inside themselves when struck by all those queerly various bits and particles, those pieces, those streams of—what?—of science. 

Death in such a case would be only another arrangement. 


—William H. Gass
Omensetter’s Luck 

.