adam’s Reviews > A Wild Peculiar Joy 1945-1982 > Status Update

“I’m in the darkening courtyard surrounded by a jungle of flowers & leaves; above the gloom, the stars appear & disappear. Far below the sea is wearing away rock & stone; the hilltop castle is crumbling under the moon.”

“If I’m crazy about women, it’s for the beauty, a beauty that blinds my gaze to everything, except lips, eyes, and roils my blood like a delicious venom. For their ally is not beauty alone, but the scantness of sense or purpose I find in the remotest curved niche
of the universe
Women and poems are my sole chance here
to give expelled breath
shape and contour
and fable it with meaning”

“Your eyes are dark and tragic as history, as you stare at the postcard village in the distance.”

“Love, I make a silence out of your name and dip my hands into it.”

“They opened their hearts to let your smile defrost them; Their livers filled with a love of justice, They became the atmosphere around them.”

“I stand on a hill; my mind reels in terraces and I’m sucked into a whirlpool of earth. An evening wind rattles the almond trees. Triumphant matador, night flings his black cape across the sky.”

“By walking I found out where I was going. By intensely hating, how to love; By loving, whom & what to love. Out of untruth, truth. Almost now I know who i am. Another step, And i shall be where I started from.”

“Now dark-green, the leaves are full of metaphors. Now, lit up is each tiny lamp of blueberry. The white nails of rain have dropped & the sun is free.”

“When a lock of your hair touched me, I knew the sensations of shattering glass. Your kissings put Blue Waters around me. I slabber for your rippling hips, your white shoulders. I am sick with love of you.”

“I take satisfaction from your smile, And the inclination of your shoulder, Before the birds leave off their singing, Slowly the dark fills up my eyes.”