La Petite Vie

Love is the kindest expression of absence— Or else is a day by the river, in which by motion it becomes clear— there have been in an hour an infinite train of rivers,& which did you want to see? One comes slowly to realize there is no evading things (the heart will have its way, though its will go unfulfilled), & there is no shame in this. The pleasures in this world— soft breeze, soft thighs, a bit of music, words that make a good sound— suggest when taken whole that the thing the body longs for is not & never has been some petite mort, a true thing known to grass & the elderly man with a kind word in greeting. And the woman saying that she is about to come, as in going to arrive— at last to fill the body held so long by stewards in her name.