‘Yes’, he cried, ‘you have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don’t even stir my curiosity. You simply produce no effect. I loved you because you were marvelous, because you had genious and intellect, because you realised the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the shadows of art. You have trown it all away. You are shallow and stupid. My God! How mad I was to love you! What a fool I have been! You are nothing to me now. I will never see you again. I will never think of you. I will never mention your name. You don’t know what you were to me once. Why.. Oh, I can’t bear to think of it! I wish I had never laid my eyes upon you! You have spoiled the romance of my life. How little you can know of love, if you say it mars your art! Without your art you are nothing..

We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.

Believe me, there is no such thing as great suffering, great regret, great memory… Everything is forgotten, even a great love. That’s what’s sad about life, and also what’s wonderful about it. There is only a way of looking at things, a way that comes to you every once in awhile. That’s why it’s good to have had love in you life after all, to have had an unhappy passion - it gives you an alibi for the vague despairs we all suffer from.

The night above. We two. Full moon.
I started to weep, you laughed.
Your scorn was a god, my laments
moments and doves in a chain.
The night below. We two. Crystal of pain.
You wept over great distances.
My ache was a clutch of agonies
over your sickly heart of sand.
Dawn married us on the bed,
our mouths to the frozen spout
of unstaunched blood.
The sun came through the shuttered balcony
and the coral of life opened its branches
over my shrouded heart.