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Some gentler passion slide into my mind, For I am soft and made of melting snow —Queen Elizabeth I Her sex sent her mother to the tower, made her father profligate with arrogant desires, but she was made of flint and backbone. Think of a young girl in a blue velvet bodice, a white collar and lace, the very prototype of virginal. Think of a woman, her court enlivened by suitors and lovers in doublets, in brocaded cloaks, despite suspicions of their motives staining the sheets, the way cups of spicy, flowery mead were sipped despite the possibility of poison. Even the crown of the sun must go down each night. Could she have stood at the prow of a ship in that great Armada she ordered, instead of at a window, waiting for urgent results? Could she have guessed that the words of a man she inspired, carved into the marble of ages, had a muscular beauty more than equal to her own worldly triumphs? Daughter, Queen, Ruler of roiling seas, of meandering rivers and meadows, of armies of soldiers, their swords and armor glittering like planets to her sun. Namesake to an age. And Poet? When she turned to the empty parchment (or once to a windowpane, a diamond for quill) everything must have gone quiet. Even a queen is naked before the naked page, awaiting not the generous spoils owed to a victor but the gifts freely given of a besotted muse.

Nimble, preserved together, milkweed-white rears upturned, female tule elk bowed into rustling foxtails. Males muscled over the slopes, jostling mantles, marking terrain. Their antlers clambered wide, steep as the gorges. As they fed, those branches twitched, sensory, delicate, yet when one buck reared squaring to look at us his antlers and his gaze held suddenly motionless. Further out, the skeleton. The tar paper it seemed to lie on was hide. Vertebrae like redwood stumps— an uneven heart-shaped cavern where a coccyx curled to its tip. Ribs fanned open hollow, emptied of organs. In the bushes its skull. Sockets and sinuses, mandible, its few small teeth. All bare now except that fur the red-brown color of a young boy’s head and also of wild iris stalks in winter still clung to the drying scalp. Below the eye’s rim sagged flat as a bicycle tire. The form was sinking away. The skin loosened, becoming other, shedding the mask that hides but must also reveal a creature. Off amid cliffs and hills some unfleshed force roamed free. In the wind, I felt the half-life I watched watch me. Elk, I said, I see you abandon this life, this earth— I stood for a time with the bones.

I love sweets,— heaven would be dying on a bed of vanilla ice cream ... But my true self is thin, all profile and effortless gestures, the sort of blond elegant girl whose body is the image of her soul. —My doctors tell me I must give up this ideal; but I WILL NOT ... cannot. Only to my husband I’m not simply a “case.” But he is a fool. He married meat, and thought it was a wife. .            .            . Why am I a girl? I ask my doctors, and they tell me they don’t know, that it is just “given.” But it has such implications—; and sometimes, I even feel like a girl. .            .            . Now, at the beginning of Ellen’s thirty-second year, her physical condition has deteriorated still further. Her use of laxatives increases beyond measure. Every evening she takes sixty to seventy tablets of a laxative, with the result that she suffers tortured vomiting at night and violent diarrhea by day, often accompanied by a weakness of the heart. She has thinned down to a skeleton, and weighs only 92 pounds. .            .            . About five years ago, I was in a restaurant, eating alone with a book. I was not married, and often did that ... —I’d turn down dinner invitations, so I could eat alone; I’d allow myself two pieces of bread, with butter, at the beginning, and three scoops of vanilla ice cream, at the end,— sitting there alone with a book, both in the book and out of it, waited on, idly watching people,— when an attractive young man and woman, both elegantly dressed, sat next to me. She was beautiful—; with sharp, clear features, a good bone structure—; if she took her make-up off in front of you, rubbing cold cream again and again across her skin, she still would be beautiful— more beautiful. And he,— I couldn’t remember when I had seen a man so attractive. I didn’t know why. He was almost a male version of her,— I had the sudden, mad notion that I wanted to be his lover ... —Were they married? were they lovers? They didn’t wear wedding rings. Their behavior was circumspect. They discussed politics. They didn’t touch ... —How could I discover? Then, when the first course arrived, I noticed the way each held his fork out for the other to taste what he had ordered ... They did this again and again, with pleased looks, indulgent smiles, for each course, more than once for each dish—; much too much for just friends ... —Their behavior somehow sickened me; the way each gladly put the food the other had offered into his mouth—; I knew what they were. I knew they slept together. An immense depression came over me ... —I knew I could never with such ease allow another to put food into my mouth: happily myself put food into another’s mouth—; I knew that to become a wife I would have to give up my ideal. .            .            . Even as a child, I saw that the “natural” process of aging is for one’s middle to thicken— one’s skin to blotch; as happened to my mother. And her mother. I loathed “Nature.” At twelve, pancakes became the most terrible thought there is ... I shall defeat“Nature.” In the hospital, when they weigh me, I wear weights secretly sewn into my belt. .            .            . January 16. The patient is allowed to eat in her room, but comes readily with her husband to afternoon coffee. Previously she had stoutly resisted this on the ground that she did not really eat but devoured like a wild animal. This she demonstrated with utmost realism.... Her physical examination showed nothing striking. Salivary glands are markedly enlarged on both sides. January 21. Has been reading Faust again. In her diary, writes that art is the “mutual permeation” of the “world of the body” and the “world of the spirit” Says that her own poems are “hospital poems ... weak—without skill or perseverance; only managing to beat their wings softly.” February 8. Agitation, quickly subsided again. Has attached herself to an elegant, very thin female patient. Homo-erotic component strikingly evident. February 15. Vexation, and torment. Says that her mind forces her always to think of eating. Feels herself degraded by this. Has entirely, for the first time in years, stopped writing poetry. .            .            . Callas is my favorite singer, but I’ve only seen her once—; I’ve never forgotten that night ... —It was in Tosca, she had long before lost weight, her voice had been, for years, deteriorating, half itself ... When her career began, of course, she was fat, enormous—; in the early photographs, sometimes I almost don’t recognize her ... The voice too then was enormous— healthy; robust; subtle; but capable of crude effects, even vulgar, almost out of high spirits, too much health ... But soon she felt that she must lose weight,— that all she was trying to express was obliterated by her body, buried in flesh—; abruptly, within four months, she lost at least sixty pounds ... —The gossip in Milan was that Callas had swallowed a tapeworm. But of course she hadn’t. The tapeworm was her soul... —How her soul, uncompromising, insatiable, must have loved eating the flesh from her bones, revealing this extraordinarily mercurial; fragile; masterly creature ... —But irresistibly, nothing stopped there; the huge voice also began to change: at first, it simply diminished in volume, in size, then the top notes became shrill, unreliable—at last, usually not there at all ... —No one knows why. Perhaps her mind, ravenous, still insatiable, sensed that to struggle with the shreds of a voice must make her artistry subtler, more refined, more capable of expressing humiliation, rage, betrayal ... —Perhaps the opposite. Perhaps her spirit loathed the unending struggle to embody itself, to manifest itself, on a stage whose mechanics, and suffocating customs, seemed expressly designed to annihilate spirit ... —I know that in Tosca, in the second act, when, humiliated, hounded by Scarpia, she sang Vissi d’arte —“I lived for art”— and in torment, bewilderment, at the end she asks, with a voice reaching harrowingly for the notes, “Art has repaid me LIKE THIS?” I felt I was watching autobiography— an art; skill; virtuosity miles distant from the usual soprano’s athleticism,— the usual musician’s dream of virtuosity without content ... —I wonder what she feels, now, listening to her recordings. For they have already, within a few years, begun to date ... Whatever they express they express through the style of a decade and a half—; a style she helped create ... —She must know that now she probably would not do a trill in exactly that way,— that the whole sound, atmosphere, dramaturgy of her recordings have just slightly become those of the past ... —Is it bitter? Does her soul tell her that she was an idiot ever to think anything material wholly could satisfy? ... —Perhaps it says:The only way to escape the History of Styles is not to have a body. .            .            . When I open my eyes in the morning, my great mystery stands before me ... —I know that I am intelligent; therefore the inability not to fear food day-and-night; this unending hunger ten minutes after I have eaten ... a childish dread of eating; hunger which can have no cause,— half my mind says that all this is demeaning... Bread for days on end drives all real thought from my brain ... —Then I think, No. The ideal of being thin conceals the ideal not to have a body—; which is NOT trivial ... This wish seems now as much a “given” of my existence as the intolerable fact that I am dark-complexioned; big-boned; and once weighed one hundred and sixty-five pounds ... —But then I think,No. That’s too simple,— without a body, who can know himself at all? Only by acting; choosing; rejecting; have I made myself— discovered who and what Ellen can be ... —But then again I think,NO. This I is anterior to name; gender; action; fashion; MATTER ITSELF,— ... trying to stop my hunger with FOOD is like trying to appease thirst with ink. .            .            . March 30. Result of the consultation: Both gentlemen agree completely with my prognosis and doubt any therapeutic usefulness of commitment even more emphatically than I. All three of us are agreed that it is not a case of obsessional neurosis and not one of manic-depressive psychosis, and that no definitely reliable therapy is possible. We therefore resolved to give in to the patient’s demand for discharge. .            .            . The train-ride yesterday was far worse than I expected ... In our compartment were ordinary people: a student; a woman; her child;— they had ordinary bodies, pleasant faces; but I thought I was surrounded by creatures with the pathetic, desperate desire to be not what they were:— the student was short, and carried his body as if forcing it to be taller—; the woman showed her gums when she smiled, and often held her hand up to hide them—; the child seemed to cry simply because it was small; a dwarf, and helpless ... —I was hungry. I had insisted that my husband not bring food ... After about thirty minutes, the woman peeled an orange to quiet the child. She put a section into its mouth—; immediately it spit it out. The piece fell to the floor. —She pushed it with her foot through the dirt toward me several inches. My husband saw me staring down at the piece ... —I didn’t move; how I wanted to reach out, and as if invisible shove it in my mouth—; my body became rigid. As I stared at him, I could see him staring at me,— then he looked at the student—; at the woman—; then back to me ... I didn’t move. —At last, he bent down, and casually threw it out the window. He looked away. —I got up to leave the compartment, then saw his face,— his eyes were red; and I saw —I’m sure I saw— disappointment. .            .            . On the third day of being home she is as if transformed. At breakfast she eats butter and sugar, at noon she eats so much that—for the first time in thirteen years!—she is satisfied by her food and gets really full. At afternoon coffee she eats chocolate creams and Easter eggs. She takes a walk with her husband, reads poems, listens to recordings, is in a positively festive mood, and all heaviness seems to have fallen away from her. She writes letters, the last one a letter to the fellow patient here to whom she had become so attached. In the evening she takes a lethal dose of poison, and on the following morning she is dead. “She looked as she had never looked in life—calm and happy and peaceful.” .            .            . Dearest.—I remember how at eighteen, on hikes with friends, when they rested, sitting down to joke or talk, I circled around them, afraid to hike ahead alone, yet afraid to rest when I was not yet truly thin. You and, yes, my husband,— you and he have by degrees drawn me within the circle; forced me to sit down at last on the ground. I am grateful. But something in me refuses it. —How eager I have been to compromise, to kill this refuser,— but each compromise, each attempt to poison an ideal which often seemed to me sterile and unreal, heightens my hunger. I am crippled. I disappoint you. Will you greet with anger, or happiness, the news which might well reach you before this letter? Your Ellen.

They just can’t seem to . . . They should try harder to . . . They ought to be more . . . We all wish they weren’t so . . . They never . . . They always . . . Sometimes they . . . Once in a while they . . . However it is obvious that they . . . Their overall tendency has been . . . The consequences of which have been . . . They don’t appear to understand that . . . If only they would make an effort to . . . But we know how difficult it is for them to . . . Many of them remain unaware of . . . Some who should know better simply refuse to . . . Of course, their perspective has been limited by . . . On the other hand, they obviously feel entitled to . . . Certainly we can’t forget that they . . . Nor can it be denied that they . . . We know that this has had an enormous impact on their . . . Nevertheless their behavior strikes us as . . . Our interactions unfortunately have been . . .

All day I tried to distinguish need from desire. Now, in the dark, I feel only bitter sadness for us, the builders, the planers of wood, because I have been looking steadily at these elms and seen the process that creates the writhing, stationary tree is torment, and have understood it will make no forms but twisted forms.

In these deep solitudes and awful cells, Where heav'nly-pensive contemplation dwells, And ever-musing melancholy reigns; What means this tumult in a vestal's veins? Why rove my thoughts beyond this last retreat? Why feels my heart its long-forgotten heat? Yet, yet I love!—From Abelard it came, And Eloisa yet must kiss the name. Dear fatal name! rest ever unreveal'd, Nor pass these lips in holy silence seal'd. Hide it, my heart, within that close disguise, Where mix'd with God's, his lov'd idea lies: O write it not, my hand—the name appears Already written—wash it out, my tears! In vain lost Eloisa weeps and prays, Her heart still dictates, and her hand obeys. Relentless walls! whose darksome round contains Repentant sighs, and voluntary pains: Ye rugged rocks! which holy knees have worn; Ye grots and caverns shagg'd with horrid thorn! Shrines! where their vigils pale-ey'd virgins keep, And pitying saints, whose statues learn to weep! Though cold like you, unmov'd, and silent grown, I have not yet forgot myself to stone. All is not Heav'n's while Abelard has part, Still rebel nature holds out half my heart; Nor pray'rs nor fasts its stubborn pulse restrain, Nor tears, for ages, taught to flow in vain. Soon as thy letters trembling I unclose, That well-known name awakens all my woes. Oh name for ever sad! for ever dear! Still breath'd in sighs, still usher'd with a tear. I tremble too, where'er my own I find, Some dire misfortune follows close behind. Line after line my gushing eyes o'erflow, Led through a sad variety of woe: Now warm in love, now with'ring in thy bloom, Lost in a convent's solitary gloom! There stern religion quench'd th' unwilling flame, There died the best of passions, love and fame. Yet write, oh write me all, that I may join Griefs to thy griefs, and echo sighs to thine. Nor foes nor fortune take this pow'r away; And is my Abelard less kind than they? Tears still are mine, and those I need not spare, Love but demands what else were shed in pray'r; No happier task these faded eyes pursue; To read and weep is all they now can do. Then share thy pain, allow that sad relief; Ah, more than share it! give me all thy grief. Heav'n first taught letters for some wretch's aid, Some banish'd lover, or some captive maid; They live, they speak, they breathe what love inspires, Warm from the soul, and faithful to its fires, The virgin's wish without her fears impart, Excuse the blush, and pour out all the heart, Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul, And waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole. Thou know'st how guiltless first I met thy flame, When Love approach'd me under Friendship's name; My fancy form'd thee of angelic kind, Some emanation of th' all-beauteous Mind. Those smiling eyes, attemp'ring ev'ry day, Shone sweetly lambent with celestial day. Guiltless I gaz'd; heav'n listen'd while you sung; And truths divine came mended from that tongue. From lips like those what precept fail'd to move? Too soon they taught me 'twas no sin to love. Back through the paths of pleasing sense I ran, Nor wish'd an Angel whom I lov'd a Man. Dim and remote the joys of saints I see; Nor envy them, that heav'n I lose for thee. How oft, when press'd to marriage, have I said, Curse on all laws but those which love has made! Love, free as air, at sight of human ties, Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies, Let wealth, let honour, wait the wedded dame, August her deed, and sacred be her fame; Before true passion all those views remove, Fame, wealth, and honour! what are you to Love? The jealous God, when we profane his fires, Those restless passions in revenge inspires; And bids them make mistaken mortals groan, Who seek in love for aught but love alone. Should at my feet the world's great master fall, Himself, his throne, his world, I'd scorn 'em all: Not Caesar's empress would I deign to prove; No, make me mistress to the man I love; If there be yet another name more free, More fond than mistress, make me that to thee! Oh happy state! when souls each other draw, When love is liberty, and nature, law: All then is full, possessing, and possess'd, No craving void left aching in the breast: Ev'n thought meets thought, ere from the lips it part, And each warm wish springs mutual from the heart. This sure is bliss (if bliss on earth there be) And once the lot of Abelard and me. Alas, how chang'd! what sudden horrors rise! A naked lover bound and bleeding lies! Where, where was Eloise? her voice, her hand, Her poniard, had oppos'd the dire command. Barbarian, stay! that bloody stroke restrain; The crime was common, common be the pain. I can no more; by shame, by rage suppress'd, Let tears, and burning blushes speak the rest. Canst thou forget that sad, that solemn day, When victims at yon altar's foot we lay? Canst thou forget what tears that moment fell, When, warm in youth, I bade the world farewell? As with cold lips I kiss'd the sacred veil, The shrines all trembl'd, and the lamps grew pale: Heav'n scarce believ'd the conquest it survey'd, And saints with wonder heard the vows I made. Yet then, to those dread altars as I drew, Not on the Cross my eyes were fix'd, but you: Not grace, or zeal, love only was my call, And if I lose thy love, I lose my all. Come! with thy looks, thy words, relieve my woe; Those still at least are left thee to bestow. Still on that breast enamour'd let me lie, Still drink delicious poison from thy eye, Pant on thy lip, and to thy heart be press'd; Give all thou canst—and let me dream the rest. Ah no! instruct me other joys to prize, With other beauties charm my partial eyes, Full in my view set all the bright abode, And make my soul quit Abelard for God. Ah, think at least thy flock deserves thy care, Plants of thy hand, and children of thy pray'r. From the false world in early youth they fled, By thee to mountains, wilds, and deserts led. You rais'd these hallow'd walls; the desert smil'd, And Paradise was open'd in the wild. No weeping orphan saw his father's stores Our shrines irradiate, or emblaze the floors; No silver saints, by dying misers giv'n, Here brib'd the rage of ill-requited heav'n: But such plain roofs as piety could raise, And only vocal with the Maker's praise. In these lone walls (their days eternal bound) These moss-grown domes with spiry turrets crown'd, Where awful arches make a noonday night, And the dim windows shed a solemn light; Thy eyes diffus'd a reconciling ray, And gleams of glory brighten'd all the day. But now no face divine contentment wears, 'Tis all blank sadness, or continual tears. See how the force of others' pray'rs I try, (O pious fraud of am'rous charity!) But why should I on others' pray'rs depend? Come thou, my father, brother, husband, friend! Ah let thy handmaid, sister, daughter move, And all those tender names in one, thy love! The darksome pines that o'er yon rocks reclin'd Wave high, and murmur to the hollow wind, The wand'ring streams that shine between the hills, The grots that echo to the tinkling rills, The dying gales that pant upon the trees, The lakes that quiver to the curling breeze; No more these scenes my meditation aid, Or lull to rest the visionary maid. But o'er the twilight groves and dusky caves, Long-sounding aisles, and intermingled graves, Black Melancholy sits, and round her throws A death-like silence, and a dread repose: Her gloomy presence saddens all the scene, Shades ev'ry flow'r, and darkens ev'ry green, Deepens the murmur of the falling floods, And breathes a browner horror on the woods. Yet here for ever, ever must I stay; Sad proof how well a lover can obey! Death, only death, can break the lasting chain; And here, ev'n then, shall my cold dust remain, Here all its frailties, all its flames resign, And wait till 'tis no sin to mix with thine. Ah wretch! believ'd the spouse of God in vain, Confess'd within the slave of love and man. Assist me, Heav'n! but whence arose that pray'r? Sprung it from piety, or from despair? Ev'n here, where frozen chastity retires, Love finds an altar for forbidden fires. I ought to grieve, but cannot what I ought; I mourn the lover, not lament the fault; I view my crime, but kindle at the view, Repent old pleasures, and solicit new; Now turn'd to Heav'n, I weep my past offence, Now think of thee, and curse my innocence. Of all affliction taught a lover yet, 'Tis sure the hardest science to forget! How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense, And love th' offender, yet detest th' offence? How the dear object from the crime remove, Or how distinguish penitence from love? Unequal task! a passion to resign, For hearts so touch'd, so pierc'd, so lost as mine. Ere such a soul regains its peaceful state, How often must it love, how often hate! How often hope, despair, resent, regret, Conceal, disdain—do all things but forget. But let Heav'n seize it, all at once 'tis fir'd; Not touch'd, but rapt; not waken'd, but inspir'd! Oh come! oh teach me nature to subdue, Renounce my love, my life, myself—and you. Fill my fond heart with God alone, for he Alone can rival, can succeed to thee. How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd; Labour and rest, that equal periods keep; "Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep;" Desires compos'd, affections ever ev'n, Tears that delight, and sighs that waft to Heav'n. Grace shines around her with serenest beams, And whisp'ring angels prompt her golden dreams. For her th' unfading rose of Eden blooms, And wings of seraphs shed divine perfumes, For her the Spouse prepares the bridal ring, For her white virgins hymeneals sing, To sounds of heav'nly harps she dies away, And melts in visions of eternal day. Far other dreams my erring soul employ, Far other raptures, of unholy joy: When at the close of each sad, sorrowing day, Fancy restores what vengeance snatch'd away, Then conscience sleeps, and leaving nature free, All my loose soul unbounded springs to thee. Oh curs'd, dear horrors of all-conscious night! How glowing guilt exalts the keen delight! Provoking Daemons all restraint remove, And stir within me every source of love. I hear thee, view thee, gaze o'er all thy charms, And round thy phantom glue my clasping arms. I wake—no more I hear, no more I view, The phantom flies me, as unkind as you. I call aloud; it hears not what I say; I stretch my empty arms; it glides away. To dream once more I close my willing eyes; Ye soft illusions, dear deceits, arise! Alas, no more—methinks we wand'ring go Through dreary wastes, and weep each other's woe, Where round some mould'ring tower pale ivy creeps, And low-brow'd rocks hang nodding o'er the deeps. Sudden you mount, you beckon from the skies; Clouds interpose, waves roar, and winds arise. I shriek, start up, the same sad prospect find, And wake to all the griefs I left behind. For thee the fates, severely kind, ordain A cool suspense from pleasure and from pain; Thy life a long, dead calm of fix'd repose; No pulse that riots, and no blood that glows. Still as the sea, ere winds were taught to blow, Or moving spirit bade the waters flow; Soft as the slumbers of a saint forgiv'n, And mild as opening gleams of promis'd heav'n. Come, Abelard! for what hast thou to dread? The torch of Venus burns not for the dead. Nature stands check'd; Religion disapproves; Ev'n thou art cold—yet Eloisa loves. Ah hopeless, lasting flames! like those that burn To light the dead, and warm th' unfruitful urn. What scenes appear where'er I turn my view? The dear ideas, where I fly, pursue, Rise in the grove, before the altar rise, Stain all my soul, and wanton in my eyes. I waste the matin lamp in sighs for thee, Thy image steals between my God and me, Thy voice I seem in ev'ry hymn to hear, With ev'ry bead I drop too soft a tear. When from the censer clouds of fragrance roll, And swelling organs lift the rising soul, One thought of thee puts all the pomp to flight, Priests, tapers, temples, swim before my sight: In seas of flame my plunging soul is drown'd, While altars blaze, and angels tremble round. While prostrate here in humble grief I lie, Kind, virtuous drops just gath'ring in my eye, While praying, trembling, in the dust I roll, And dawning grace is op'ning on my soul: Come, if thou dar'st, all charming as thou art! Oppose thyself to Heav'n; dispute my heart; Come, with one glance of those deluding eyes Blot out each bright idea of the skies; Take back that grace, those sorrows, and those tears; Take back my fruitless penitence and pray'rs; Snatch me, just mounting, from the blest abode; Assist the fiends, and tear me from my God! No, fly me, fly me, far as pole from pole; Rise Alps between us! and whole oceans roll! Ah, come not, write not, think not once of me, Nor share one pang of all I felt for thee. Thy oaths I quit, thy memory resign; Forget, renounce me, hate whate'er was mine. Fair eyes, and tempting looks (which yet I view!) Long lov'd, ador'd ideas, all adieu! Oh Grace serene! oh virtue heav'nly fair! Divine oblivion of low-thoughted care! Fresh blooming hope, gay daughter of the sky! And faith, our early immortality! Enter, each mild, each amicable guest; Receive, and wrap me in eternal rest! See in her cell sad Eloisa spread, Propp'd on some tomb, a neighbour of the dead. In each low wind methinks a spirit calls, And more than echoes talk along the walls. Here, as I watch'd the dying lamps around, From yonder shrine I heard a hollow sound. "Come, sister, come!" (it said, or seem'd to say) "Thy place is here, sad sister, come away! Once like thyself, I trembled, wept, and pray'd, Love's victim then, though now a sainted maid: But all is calm in this eternal sleep; Here grief forgets to groan, and love to weep, Ev'n superstition loses ev'ry fear: For God, not man, absolves our frailties here." I come, I come! prepare your roseate bow'rs, Celestial palms, and ever-blooming flow'rs. Thither, where sinners may have rest, I go, Where flames refin'd in breasts seraphic glow: Thou, Abelard! the last sad office pay, And smooth my passage to the realms of day; See my lips tremble, and my eye-balls roll, Suck my last breath, and catch my flying soul! Ah no—in sacred vestments may'st thou stand, The hallow'd taper trembling in thy hand, Present the cross before my lifted eye, Teach me at once, and learn of me to die. Ah then, thy once-lov'd Eloisa see! It will be then no crime to gaze on me. See from my cheek the transient roses fly! See the last sparkle languish in my eye! Till ev'ry motion, pulse, and breath be o'er; And ev'n my Abelard be lov'd no more. O Death all-eloquent! you only prove What dust we dote on, when 'tis man we love. Then too, when fate shall thy fair frame destroy, (That cause of all my guilt, and all my joy) In trance ecstatic may thy pangs be drown'd, Bright clouds descend, and angels watch thee round, From op'ning skies may streaming glories shine, And saints embrace thee with a love like mine. May one kind grave unite each hapless name, And graft my love immortal on thy fame! Then, ages hence, when all my woes are o'er, When this rebellious heart shall beat no more; If ever chance two wand'ring lovers brings To Paraclete's white walls and silver springs, O'er the pale marble shall they join their heads, And drink the falling tears each other sheds; Then sadly say, with mutual pity mov'd, "Oh may we never love as these have lov'd!" From the full choir when loud Hosannas rise, And swell the pomp of dreadful sacrifice, Amid that scene if some relenting eye Glance on the stone where our cold relics lie, Devotion's self shall steal a thought from Heav'n, One human tear shall drop and be forgiv'n. And sure, if fate some future bard shall join In sad similitude of griefs to mine, Condemn'd whole years in absence to deplore, And image charms he must behold no more; Such if there be, who loves so long, so well; Let him our sad, our tender story tell; The well-sung woes will soothe my pensive ghost; He best can paint 'em, who shall feel 'em most.

In love it may be dangerous to reckon on time to count on it time’s here and then it’s gone   I’m not thinking of death or disaster but of the slippage the unpredictable disappearance of days on which we were depending for happiness.

Sometimes the blue in Blue Hawaii gets lost. But Elvis’s eyes speak pure Esperanto.

You’ll need a corpse, your own or someone else’s. You’ll need a certain distance; the less you care about your corpse the better. Light should be unforgiving, so as to lend a literal aspect to your project. Flesh should be putty, each hair of the brows, each lash, a pencil mark. If the skeleton is intact, its shape may suggest beginnings of a structure, though even here modification might occur; heavier tools are waiting in the drawer, as well as wire, varied lengths and thicknesses of doweling. Odd hollows may be filled with bundled towel. As for the fluids, arrange them on the cart in a pleasing manner. I prefer we speak of ointments. This notion of one’s anointing will help distract you from a simpler story of your handiwork. Those people in the parlor made requests, remember? Don’t be concerned. Whatever this was to them, it is all yours now. The clay of your creation lies before you, invites your hand. Becoming anxious? That’s good. You should be a little anxious. You’re ready. Hold the knife as you would a quill, hardly at all. See that first line before you cross it, and draw.

It’s a wave, isn’t it? Not a particle. A fresh, cool wave, so why am I flushed and not washed? Why dirtier than before? 1. Etymology On the subject of our names. They’re so embracing, thinking they’re all us and swallowing themselves into our nausea. Yet we never quite die on the spot. We put off being what we’re called, we take the hint. Time is never wasted. It is always spent. 2. Teleology Sheer fabric trailing through 4 a.m. I thought it was opaque and earlier. 3. Mathematics I know you know I know. And the mirror multiplies inside. The world is no bigger, but next time do the math, because I wanted to know none of what I now know twice. 4. The Principle of the Borg Saying “There’s no one like me” accomplishes the exact opposite of what you mean. It is true only insofar as it is true for everyone equally. So it means you are not special in any way. Which should be enough for you. 5. Documentary This clothing, a maladaptive wrapping, cuts me up. I am a vignette, floated knowingly since I pulled myself through myself, like a unitard. Too many eyeholes have been cut and pieced together to make flesh less various with others. 6. Medicine The cure for embarrassment is substitution. Strap, don’t pluck. Baldness makes headlines. Use grass. Use less. Shorts under your skirt for recess. Redo the surfaces of your wrong turns to make taking them smoother in the future. 7. Cosmology Things are less embarrassing at the cellular level. Remember? We were a whole part of the universe before Mother busted the party. Before we were ourselves. Now, like dirty soap, we attract what we repel. 8. Apology Even the clumsiest fate is perfectly shaped, so the view took over looking but the sweetest thing I’ve ever known is obscene with a beautiful sugar rotted down to its truth. Loving you a serious accidental shame and day flatulates into night, trips and falls in front of millions into morning. In thrall to this pocus: the end of fear starts with such an annihilating blush, with such a stutter.