The air had become heavy, not because it had greater substance, but because there was nothing left to breathe. - Louise Glück

Balm of the summer night, balm of the ordinary,
imperial joy and sorrow of human existence,
the dreamed as well as the lived — what could be dearer than this, given the closeness of death?

To say I’m without fear–
it wouldn’t be true.
I’m afraid of sickness, humiliation.
Like anyone, I have my dreams.
But I’ve learned to hide them,
to protect myself
from fulfillment: all happiness
attracts the Fates’ anger.
They are sisters, savages–
in the end, they have
no emotion but envy. — 'Confession

It seems to me that the desire to make art produces an ongoing experience of longing, a restlessness sometimes, but not inevitably, played out romantically, or sexually. Always there seems something ahead, the next poem or story, visible, at least, apprehensible, but unreachable. To perceive it at all is to be haunted by it; some sound, some tone, becomes a torment — the poem embodying that sound seems to exist somewhere already finished. It’s like a lighthouse, except that, as one swims towards it, it backs away.