I Am Realizing Once And For All

I Loved Them All The Way One Loves At Any Age -- If It's Real At All -- Obsessively, Painfully, With Wild Exultation, With Guilt, With Conflict; I Wrote Poems To And About Them, I Put Them Into Novels (disguised Of Course); I Brooded Upon Why They Were As They Were, So Often Maddening Don't You Know? I Wrote Them Ridiculous Letters. I Lived With Their Faces. I Knew Their Every Gesture By Heart. I Stalked Them Like Wild Animals. I Studied Them As If They Were Maps Of The World -- And In A Way I Suppose They Were.

Pain Can Make A Whole Winter Bright, Like Fever, Force Us To Live Deep And Hard.

She Became For Me An Island Of Light, Fun, Wisdom Where I Could Run With My Discoveries And Torments And Hopes At Any Time Of Day And Find Welcome.

I Tell The Gods Are Still Alive / And They Are Not Consoling.

So Let The World Go, But Hold Fast To Joy.