What Began It All Was The Bright

This Last Night We Tear Into Each Other, As If To Wound, As If To Find The Key To Everything Before Morning.

There Are Betrayals In War That Are Childlike Compared With Our Human Betrayals During Peace. The New Lovers Enter The Habits Of The Other. Things Are Smashed, Revealed In A New Light. This Is Done With Nervous Or Tender Sentences, Although The Heart Is An Organ Of Fire.

In The Desert The Most Loved Waters, Like A Lover's Name, Are Carried Blue In Your Hands, Enter Your Throat. One Swallows Absence.

Every Immigrant Family, It Seems, Has Someone Who Does Not Belong In The New Country They Have Come To. It Feels Like Permanent Exile To That One Brother Or Wife Who Cannot Stand A Silent Fate In Boston Or London Or Melbourne. I’ve Met Many Who Remain Haunted By The Persistent Ghost Of An Earlier Place.

If Any Of You On Your Journeys See Her-shout To Me, Whistle...he Sang, And It Became A Habit For Audiences To Shout And Whistle In Response To Those Lines. There Was Nowhere He Could Hide In Such A Song That Had All Of Its Doors And Windows Open, So That He Could Walk Out Of It Artlessly, The Antiphonal Responses Blending With Him As If He Were No Longer On Stage.