Quotable

How do they do it, the ones who make love without love? Beautiful as dancers, gliding over each other like ice-skaters over the ice, fingers hooked inside each other's bodies, faces red as steak, wine, wet as the children at birth whose mothers are going to give them away. How do they come to the come to the come to the God come to the still waters, and not love the one who came there with them, light rising slowly as steam off their joined skin? These are the true religious, the purists, the pros, the ones who will not accept a false Messiah, love the priest instead of the God. They do not mistake the lover for their own pleasure, they are like great runners: they know they are alone with the road surface, the cold, the wind, the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio- vascular health—just factors, like the partner in the bed, and not the truth, which is the single body alone in the universe against its own best time.

Lovers in the act dispense With such meum-teum sense As might warningly reveal What they must not pick or steal, And their nostrum is to say: You and I are both away. After, when they disentwine You from me and yours from mine, Neither can be certain who Was that me whose mine was you. To the act again they go More completely now to know Theft is theft and raid is raid Though reciprocally made. Lovers, the conclusion is Doubled sighs and jealousies In a single heart that grieves For lost honor among thieves.

In their congealed light We discover that what we had taken for a face Has neither eyes nor mouth, But only the impersonality of anatomy. Silencing movement, They withdraw life. Definition grows clear-cut, but bodiless, Withering by a dimension. To see thus Is to ignore the revenge of light on shadow, To confound both in a brittle and false union. This fictive extension into madness Has a kind of bracing effect: That normality is, after all, desirable One can no longer doubt having experienced its opposite. Binoculars are the last phase in a romanticism: The starkly mad vision, not mortal, But dangling one in a vicarious, momentary, idiocy. To dispense with them Is to make audible the steady roar of evening. Withdrawing in slow ripples of orange, Like the retreat of water from sea caves.

The longer one's life, the more torments of memory. Only a part is remembered and that's already a blessing. Yet even that is enough to disturb a peace so much desired. To confess. To unload one's guilt? But memory preserves on the same level moments of humiliation in school, social blunders, tactless behavior, horrible defeats, sins. In other words, everything that belies our image of ourselves as brave, heroic, pure, goodhearted. To whom would one confess these things: "I made a fool of myself, you should have seen their glances!" Or, "I know that they, though they would not say it, thought I behaved poorly" or "They placed their stake on me and I lost" or "At a moment that was for me decisive, I failed"? Where is contrition, divided by the catechism into perfect, if it is impossible to distinguish between improper behavior at the table and wounding or killing a human being?

I should say that love is the kind of warfare in which victory is to the weak. The strong who force themselves to sell bliss for despair are the defeated. The probability is that they will not be able to keep up their self-denying resolutions. While emotions are still vigorous and clamant, that "clean break" which the inexperienced believe in so passionately is the most futile of aims; and even in the rare instances where it can be achieved, it exacts much more in the long run from the renouncer than the renounced.

we waltz into this place a couple of Papish cats is doing an Aztec two-step And I says Dad let's cut but then this dame comes up behind me and says You and me could really exist Wow I says Only the next day she has bad teeth and really hates poetry

Words plucked out of the air some six years ago when I was wild with love and torn almost in two scatter like leaves this night of whistling wind and rain. It is my heart that's late, it is my song that's flown. Outdoors all afternoon under a gunmetal sky staking my garden down, I kneeled to the crickets trilling underfoot as if about to burst from their crusty shells; and like a child again marveled to hear so clear and brave a music pour from such a small machine. What makes the engine go? Desire, desire, desire. The longing for the dance stirs in the buried life. One season only, and it's done. So let the battered old willow thrash against the windowpanes and the house timbers creak. Darling, do you remember the man you loved? Touch me, remind me who I am.

Undesirable you may have been, untouchable you were not. Not forgotten or passed over at the proper time. As estimated, you died. Things marched, sufficient, to that end. Just so much Zyklon and leather, patented terror, so many routine cries. (I have made an elegy for myself it is true) September fattens on vines. Roses flake from the wall. The smoke of harmless fires drifts to my eyes. This is plenty. This is more than enough.

Well, I have lost you; and I lost you fairly; In my own way, and with my full consent. Say what you will, kings in a tumbrel rarely Went to their deaths more proud than this one went. Some nights of apprehension and hot weeping I will confess; but that's permitted me; Day dried my eyes; I was not one for keeping Rubbed in a cage a wing that would be free. If I had loved you less or played you slyly I might have held you for a summer more, But at the cost of words I value highly, And no such summer as the one before. Should I outlive this anguish—and men do— I shall have only good to say of you.

The patterns of human history mix decency and depravity in equal measure. We often assume, therefore, that such a fine balance of results must emerge from societies made of decent and depraved people in equal numbers. But we need to expose and celebrate the fallacy of this conclusion so that, in this year of crisis, we may reaffirm an essential truth too easily forgotten, and regain some crucial comfort too readily forgone. Good and kind people outnumber all others by thousands to one. The tragedy of human history lies in the enormous potential for destruction in rare acts of evil, not in the high frequency of evil people. Complex systems can only be built step by step, whereas destruction requires but an instant. Thus, in what I like to call the Great Asymmetry, every spectacular act of evil will be balanced by 10,000 acts of kindness, too often unnoted and invisible as the "ordinary" efforts of a vast majority. We have a duty, almost a holy responsibility, to record and honor the victorious weight of these innumerable little kindnesses, when an unprecedented act of evil so threatens to distort our perception of ordinary human behavior. I have stood at ground zero, stunned by the twisted ruins of the largest human structure ever destroyed in a catastrophic moment. And I have contemplated a single day of carnage that our nation has not suffered since battles that still evoke passions and tears nearly 150 years later: Antietam, Gettysburg, Cold Harbor. The scene is insufferably sad, but not at all depressing. Rather ground zero can only be described, in the lost meaning of a grand old word, as "sublime," in the sense of awe inspired by solemnity. In human terms, ground zero is the focal point for a vast web of bustling goodness, channeling uncountable deeds of kindness from an entire planet—the acts that must be recorded to reaffirm the overwhelming weight of human decency. The rubble of ground zero stands mute, while a beehive of human activity churns within, and radiates outward, as everyone makes a contribution, big or tiny according to means and skills, but each of equal worth. My wife and stepdaughter established a depot on Spring Street to collect and ferry needed items in short supply, including face masks and shoe inserts, to the workers at ground zero. Word spread like a wildfire of goodness, and people streamed in, bringing gifts from a pocket full of batteries to a $10,000 purchase of hard hats, made on the spot by a local supply house and delivered right to us. I will cite but one tiny story, among so many, to add to the count that will overwhelm the power of any terrorist's act. And by such tales, multiplied many million fold, let those few depraved people finally understand why their vision of inspired fear cannot prevail over ordinary decency. As we left a local restaurant to make a delivery to ground zero late one evening, the cook gave us a shopping bag and said: "Here's a dozen apple brown bettys, our best dessert, still warm. Please give them to the rescue workers." How lovely, I thought, but how meaningless, except as an act of solidarity, connecting the cook to the cleanup. Still, we promised that we would make the distribution, and we put the bag of twelve apple brown bettys atop several thousand face masks and shoe pads. Twelve apple brown bettys into the breach. Twelve apple brown bettys for thousands of workers. And then I learned something I should never have forgotten—and the joke turned on me. These trivial symbols in my initial judgment turned into little drops of gold within a rainstorm of similar offerings for stomach and soul, from children's postcards to cheers by the roadside. We gave the last one to a firefighter, an older man in a young crowd, sitting alone in utter exhaustion as he said, with a twinkle and a smile restored to his face: "Thank you. This is the most lovely thing I've seen in four days—and still warm."

To be married in Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada, a bride must swear that she is eighteen or has parental permission and a bridegroom that he is twenty-one or has parental permission. Someone must put up five dollars for the license. (On Sundays and holidays, fifteen dollars. The Clark County Courthouse issues marriage licenses at any time of the day or night except between noon and one in the afternoon, between eight and nine in the evening, and between four and five in the morning.) Nothing else is required. The State of Nevada, alone among these United States, demands neither a premarital blood test nor a waiting period before or after the issuance of a marriage license. Driving in across the Mojave from Los Angeles, one sees the signs way out on the desert, looming up from that moonscape of rattlesnakes and mesquite, even before the Las Vegas lights appear like a mirage on the horizon: "GETTING MARRIED? Free License Information First Strip Exit." Perhaps the Las Vegas wedding industry achieved its peak operational efficiency between 9:00 p.m. and midnight of August 26, 1965, an otherwise unremarkable Thursday which happened to be, by Presidential order, the last day on which anyone could improve his draft status merely by getting married. One hundred and seventy-one couples were pronounced man and wife in the name of Clark County and the State of Nevada that night, sixty-seven of them by a single justice of the peace, Mr. James A. Brennan. Mr. Brennan did one wedding at the Dunes and the other sixty-six in his office, and charged each couple eight dollars. One bride lent her veil to six others. "I got it down from five to three minutes," Mr. Brennan said later of his feat. "I could've married them en masse, but they're people, not cattle. People expect more when they get married." What people who get married in Las Vegas actually do expect—what, in the largest sense, their "expectations" are—strikes one as a curious and self-contradictory business. Las Vegas is the most extreme and allegorical of American settlements, bizarre and beautiful in its venality and in its devotion to immediate gratification, a place the tone of which is set by mobsters and call girls and ladies' room attendants with amyl nitrite poppers in their uniform pockets. Almost everyone notes that there is no "time" in Las Vegas, no night and no day and no past and no future; neither is there any logical sense of where one is. One is standing on a highway in the middle of a vast hostile desert looking at an eighty-foot sign which blinks "STARDUST" or "CAESAR'S PALACE." Yes, but what does that explain? This geographical implausibility reinforces the sense that what happens there has no connection with "real" life; Nevada cities like Reno and Carson are ranch towns, Western towns, places behind which there is some historical imperative. But Las Vegas seems to exist only in the eye of the beholder. All of which makes it an extraordinarily stimulating and interesting place, but an odd one in which to want to wear a candlelight satin Priscilla of Boston wedding dress with Chantilly lace insets, tapered sleeves and a detachable modified train. And yet the Las Vegas wedding business seems to appeal to precisely that impulse. "Sincere and Dignified Since 1954," one wedding chapel advertises. There are forty-nine such wedding chapels in Las Vegas, intensely competitive, each offering better, faster, and, by implication, more sincere services than the next: Our Photos Best Anywhere, Your Wedding on A Phonograph Record, Candlelight with Your Ceremony, Honeymoon Accommodations, Free Transportation from Your Motel to Courthouse to Chapel and Return to Motel, Religious or Civil Ceremonies, Dressing Rooms, Flowers, Rings, Announcements, Witnesses Available, and Ample Parking. All of these services, like most others in Las Vegas (sauna baths, payroll-check cashing, chinchilla coats for sale or rent) are offered twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, presumably on the premise that marriage, like craps, is a game to be played when the table seems hot. But what strikes one most about the Strip chapels, with their wishing wells and stained-glass paper windows and their artificial bouvardia, is that so much of their business is by no means a matter of simple convenience, of late-night liaisons between show girls and baby Crosbys. Of course there is some of that. But Las Vegas seems to offer something other than "convenience"; it is merchandising "niceness," the facsimile of proper ritual, to children who do not know how else to find it, how to make the arrangements, how to do it "right." All day and evening long on the Strip, one sees actual wedding parties, waiting under the harsh lights at a crosswalk, standing uneasily in the parking lot of the Frontier while the photographer certifies the occasion, takes the picture: the bride in a veil and white satin pumps, the bridegroom usually in a white dinner jacket, and even an attendant or two, a sister or a best friend in hot-pink peau de soie, a flirtation veil, a carnation nosegay. "When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever," the organist plays, and then a few bars of Lohengrin. The mother cries; the stepfather, awkward in his role, invites the chapel hostess to join them for a drink at the Sands. The hostess declines with a professional smile; she has already transferred her interest to the group waiting outside. One bride out, another in, and again the sign goes up on the chapel door: "One moment please—Wedding." I sat next to one such wedding party in a Strip restaurant the last time I was in Las Vegas. The marriage had just taken place; the bride still wore her dress, the mother her corsage. A bored waiter poured out a few swallows of pink champagne ("on the house") for everyone but the bride, who was too young to be served. "You'll need something with more kick than that," the bride's father said with heavy jocularity to his new son-in-law; the ritual jokes about the wedding night had a certain Panglossian character, since the bride was clearly several months pregnant. Another round of pink champagne, this time not on the house, and the bride began to cry. "It was just as nice," she sobbed, "as I hoped and dreamed it would be."

The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.

Colonel David Marcus was killed in battle during the Israeli War in June 1948. In his wallet was found a card that spoke of death. It read: "I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the ocean. "She is an object of beauty and strength. And I stand and watch her, until at length she is only a ribbon of white cloud just where the sky and sea come to mingle with each other. Then someone at my side says, 'There! She's gone!' "Gone where? Gone from my sight — that is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side, and just as able to bear her load of living freight — to the place of destination. Her diminished size is in me, not in her. "And just at the moment when someone at my side says, 'There! She's gone!' there are other voices ready to take up the glad shout, 'There! She comes!' And that is dying." 2Mc 7:1-2 9-14; Lk 20:27-38

The sea cries with its meaningless voice, Treating alike its dead and its living, Probably bored with the appearance of heaven After so many millions of nights without sleep, Without purpose, without self-deception. Stone likewise. Stone is imprisoned Like nothing in the Universe. Created for black sleep. Or growing Conscious of the sun's red spot occasionally, Then dreaming it is the foetus of God. Over the stone rushes the wind, Able to mingle with nothing, Like the hearing of the blind stone itself. Or turns, as if the stone's mind came feeling A fantasy of directions. Drinking the sea and eating the rock A tree struggles to make leaves — An old woman fallen from space Unprepared for these conditions. She hangs on, because her mind's gone completely. Minute after minute, aeon after aeon, Nothing lets up or develops. And this is neither a bad variant nor a tryout. This is where the staring angels go through. This is where all the stars bow down.

About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters; how well, they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

A Winter Landscape I The seven white peacocks against the castle wall In the high trees and the dusk are like tapestry, The sky being orange, the high wall a purple barrier The canal, dead silver in the dusk And you are far away. Yet I can see infinite miles of mountains. Little lights shining in rows in the dark of them; Infinite miles of marshes. Thin wisps of mist, shimmering like blue webs Over the dusk of them, great curves and horns of sea And dusk and dusk and the little village And you, sitting in the firelight. II Around me are the two hundred and forty men of B Company Mud-coloured. Going about their avocations, Resting between their practice of the art Of killing men, As I too rest between my practice Of the Art of killing men. Their pipes glow above the mud and their mud colour, Moving like fireflies beneath trees, I too being mud-coloured Beneath the trees and peacocks. When they come up to me in the dusk They start, stiffen and salute, almost invisibly. And the forty-two prisoners from the Battalion guardroom Crouch over the tea cans in the shadow of the wall, And the bread hunks glimmer, beneath the peacocks, And you are far away. III Presently I shall go in, I shall write down the names of the forty-two Prisoners in the Battalion guardroom On fair white foolscap. Their names, rank, and regimental numbers, Corps, Companies, Punishments and Offenses, Remarks, and By whom Confined. Yet in spite of all I shall see only The infinite miles of dark mountain, The infinite miles of dark marshland, Great curves and horns of sea The little village. And you, Sitting in the firelight.

somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond any experience, your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near your slightest look will easily unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose or if your wish be to close me, i and my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending; nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility: whose texture compels me with the color of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing (i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

I was saved from sin when I was going on thirteen. But not really saved. It happened like this. There was a big revival at my Auntie Reed's church. Every night for weeks there had been much preaching, singing, praying, and shouting, and some very hardened sinners had been brought to Christ, and the membership of the church had grown by leaps and bounds. Then just before the revival ended, they held a special meeting for children, "to bring the young lambs to the fold." My aunt spoke of it for days ahead. That night I was escorted to the front row and placed on the mourners' bench with all the other young sinners, who had not yet been brought to Jesus. My aunt told me that when you were saved you saw a light, and something happened to you inside! And Jesus came into your life! And God was with you from then on! She said you could see and hear and feel Jesus in your soul. I believed her. I had heard a great many old people say the same thing and it seemed to me they ought to know. So I sat there calmly in the hot, crowded church, waiting for Jesus to come to me. The preacher preached a wonderful rhythmical sermon, all moans and shouts and lonely cries and dire pictures of hell, and then he sang a song about the ninety and nine safe in the fold, but one little lamb was left out in the cold. Then he said: "Won't you come? Won't you come to Jesus? Young lambs, won't you come?" And he held out his arms to all us young sinners there on the mourners' bench. And the little girls cried. And some of them jumped up and went to Jesus right away. But most of us just sat there. A great many old people came and knelt around us and prayed, old women with jet-black faces and braided hair, old men with work-gnarled hands. And the church sang a song about the lower lights are burning, some poor sinners to be saved. And the whole building rocked with prayer and song. Still I kept waiting to Jesus. Finally all the young people had gone to the altar and were saved, but one boy and me. He was a rounder's son named Westley. Westley and I were surrounded by sisters and deacons praying. It was very hot in the church, and getting late now. Finally Westley said to me in a whisper: "God damn! I'm tired o' sitting here. Let's get up and be saved." So he got up and was saved. Then I was left all alone on the mourners' bench. My aunt came and knelt at my knees and cried, while prayers and song swirled all around me in the little church. The whole congregation prayed for me alone, in a mighty wail of moans and voices. And I kept waiting serenely for Jesus, waiting, waiting — but he didn't come. I wanted to see him, but nothing happened to me. Nothing! I wanted something to happen to me, but nothing happened. I heard the songs and the minister saying: "Why don't you come? My dear child, why don't you come to Jesus? Jesus is waiting for you. He wants you. Why don't you come? Sister Reed, what is this child's name?" "Langston," my aunt sobbed. "Langston, why don't you come? Why don't you come and be saved? Oh, Lamb of God! Why don't you come?" Now it was really getting late. I began to be ashamed of myself, holding everything up so long. I began to wonder what God thought about Westley, who certainly hadn't seen Jesus either, but who was now sitting proudly on the platform, swinging his knickerbockered legs and grinning down at me, surrounded by deacons and old women on their knees praying. God had not struck Westley dead for taking his name in vain or for lying in the temple. So I decided that maybe to save further trouble, I'd better lie, too, and say that Jesus had come, and get up and be saved. So I got up. Suddenly the whole room broke into a sea of shouting, as they saw me rise. Waves of rejoicing swept the place. Women leaped in the air. My aunt threw her arms around me. The minister took me by the hand and led me to the platform. When things quieted down, in a hushed silence, punctuated by a few ecstatic "Amens," all the new young lambs were blessed in the name of God. Then joyous singing filled the room. That night, for the first time in my life but one — for I was a big boy twelve years old — I cried. I cried, in bed alone, and couldn't stop. I buried my head under the quilts, but my aunt heard me. She woke up and told my uncle I was crying because the Holy Ghost had come into my life, and because I had seen Jesus. But I was really crying because I couldn't bear to tell her that I had lied, that I had deceived everybody in the church, that I hadn't seen Jesus, and that now I didn't believe there was a Jesus anymore, since he didn't come to help me.

Well bully you, Frankie. If you're keeping track, I think you should regret "My Way," but who am I to say — my own catalog is endless: those roads to success that beckoned but seemed too long a trek, the bridges burned in fiery rages, the rash decisions, the bitter words I could not suck back into my throat where they might have stuck, straining to escape, but would not have stung those in their way; the child I did not have, who in my mind still adores me unreservedly, but who am I to say — she might have grown to love the needle more, the sting of the serpent's tooth. Who am I to say that the missteps, the wrong turns, the bright lights that lured & burned and seared my heart leaving scars of regret — who am I to say they didn't, in the end, make me whole.

Sleep softly my old love my beauty in the dark night is a dream we have as you know as you know night is a dream you know an old love in the dark around you as you go without end as you know in the night where you go sleep softly my old love without end in the dark in the love that you know

The dutiful first answer seems programmed into us by our meager expectations: "A friend is one who will be there in times of trouble." But I believe this is a skin-deep answer to describe skin-deep friends. There is something irresistible about misfortune to human nature, and standbys for setbacks and sicknesses (as long as they are not too lengthy, or contagious) can usually be found. They can be hired. What I value is not the "friend" who, looming sympathetically above me when I have been dashed to the ground, appears gigantically generous in the hour of my reversal; more and more I desire friends who will endure my ecstasies with me, who possess wings of their own and who will fly with me. I don't mean this as arrogance (I am too superstitious to indulge long in that trait), and I don't fly all that often. What I mean is that I seek (and occasionally find) friends with whom it is possible to drag out all those beautiful, old, outrageously aspiring costumes and rehearse for the Great Roles; persons whose qualities groom me and train me up for love. It is for these people that I reserve the glowing hours, too good not to share. It is the existence of these people that remind me that the words "friend" and "free" grew out of each other. When I was in eighth grade, I had a friend. We were shy and "too serious" about our studies when it was becoming fashionable with our classmates to acquire the social graces. We said little at school, but she would come to my house and we would sit down with pencil and paper, and one of us would say: "Let's start with a train whistle today." We would sit quietly and write separate poems or stories that grew out of a train whistle. Then we would read them aloud. At the end of the school year, we, too, were transformed into social creatures and the stories and poems stopped. When I lived for a time in London, I had a friend. He was in despair and I was in despair, but our friendship was based on the small flicker of foresight in each of us that told us we would be sorry later if we didn't explore this great city because we had felt bad at the time. We met every Sunday for five weeks and found many marvelous things. We walked until our despairs resolved themselves and then we parted. We gave London to each other. For almost four years I have had a remarkable friend whose imagination illumes mine. We write long letters in which we often discover our strangest selves. Each of us appears, sometimes prophetically, sometimes comically, in the other's dreams. She and I agree that, at certain times, we seem to be parts of the same mind. In my most sacred and interesting moments, I often think: "Yes, I must tell ———." We have never met. It is such exceptional (in a sense divine) companions I wish to salute. I have seen the glories of the world reflected briefly through our encounters. One bright hour with their kind is worth more to me than a lifetime guarantee of the services of a Job's comforter whose "helpful" lamentations will only clutter the healing silence necessary to those darkest moments in which I would rather be my own best friend.

As a sloop with a sweep of immaculate wing on her delicate spine And a keel as steel as a root that holds in the sea as she leans, Leaning and laughing, my warm-hearted beauty, you ride, you ride, You tack on the curves with parabola speed and a kiss of goodbye, Like a thoroughbred sloop, my new high-spirited spirit, my kiss. As my foot suggests that you leap in the air with your hips of a girl, My finger that praises your wheel and announces your voices of song, Flouncing your skirts, you blueness of joy, you flirt of politeness, You leap, you intelligence, essence of wheelness with silvery nose, And your platinum clocks of excitement stir like the hairs of a fern. But how alien you are from the booming belts of your birth and the smoke Where you turned on the stinging lathes of Detroit and Lansing at night And shrieked at the torch in your secret parts and the amorous tests, But now with your eyes that enter the future of roads you forget; You are all instinct with your phosphorous glow and your streaking hair. And now when we stop it is not as the bird from the shell that I leave Or leathery pilot who steps from his bird with a sneer of delight, And not as the ignorant beast do you squat and watch me depart, But with exquisite breathing you smile, with satisfaction of love, And I touch you again as you tick in the silence and settle in sleep.

He ran his hands over me like Braille He liked to bruise the skin of breasts, rib cage. "Why are you so thin?" he asked. My body a rebuke to his stern solid flesh. What's the effort of love but a kind of swimming Through another's flesh? A man's need, so sudden & hot! It's intimidating no matter how many times it's happened in just the same way. It's faces that love, we know that. We know better, but we know that. Mine was covered in a porcelain shell of which I think I was vain: languid-empty eyes, polite mouth, Skin without history. Beneath that face, the other he never saw. Contorted in strain, in hope in anger. Female passion that's sheerly muscle, mouth like a pike's. He saw the one, spoke and pleaded with the one, Those eyes, that mouth, but the other, beneath, He never knew, nor guessed. What worried him was—"Sometimes I think I might kill you." In the end nothing came of it. We remained married to other people. We grew older.

When I work outdoors all day, every day, as I do now, in the fall, getting ready for winter, tearing up the garden, digging potatoes, gathering the squash, cutting firewood, making kindling, repairing bridges over the brook, clearing trails in the woods, doing the last of the fall mowing, pruning apple trees, taking down the screens, putting up the storm windows, banking the house — all these things, as preparation for the coming cold... when I am every day all day all body and no mind, when I am physically, wholly and completely, in this world with the birds, the deer, the sky, the wind, the trees... when day after day I think of nothing but what the next chore is, when I go from clearing woods roads, to sharpening a chain saw, to changing the oil in a mower, to stacking wood, when I am all body and no mind... when I am only here and now and nowhere else — then, and only then, do I see the crippling power of mind, the curse of thought, and I pause and wonder why I so seldom find this shining moment in the now.

"Infidelity," he confides, "is anything but spontaneous. You can't possibly conduct a proper affair without a lot of deliberating, scheming, speculating and conniving. It's a delicate balance where the excitement must equal the guilt and the sex must be as bright as the future you gamble." — as quoted by Karen Koto

may i feel said he (i'll squeal said she just once said he) it's fun said she (may i touch said he how much said she a lot said he) why not said she (let's go said he not too far said she what's too far said he where you are said she) may i stay said he (which way said she like this said he if you kiss said she may i move said he is it love said she) if you're willing said he (but you're killing said she but it's life said he but your wife said she now said he) ow said she (tiptop said he don't stop said she oh no said he) go slow said she (cccome? said he ummm said she) you're divine! said he (you are Mine said she)

Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.

In the next room his brothers are asleep, the two still in school. They just can't wait to grow up and be men, to make money. Last night at dinner they sat across from him, their brother, a man, but a man with nothing, without money or the prospect of money. He never pays, never tosses a bill down on the bar so he can say, "On me!" At four in the morning when he can't sleep, he rehearses the stale phrase to himself with a delicate motion of the wrist that lets the bill float down. He can't pace for fear of waking his mom who sleeps alone downstairs in the old storage room off the kitchen. When he was a kid, twelve or fourteen, like his brothers, he never knew why boys no older than he did the things they did, the robberies, gang fights, ODs, rapes, he never understood his father's wordless rages that would explode in punches and kicks, bottles, plates, glasses hurled across the kitchen. The next morning would be so quiet that from his room upstairs he'd hear the broom-straws scratching the floor as his mother swept up the debris and hear her humming to herself. Now it's clear, so obvious he wonders why it took so long for him to get it and come of age.

Two towels mean he's been here, and one towel means he's gone. Beer bottles gathering dust mean he's been gone awhile. Then a new name on the phone machine, wine glasses on the floor, my children exchange glances, eyebrows up and down. So who is this guy? they ask me. Just some friend, I say. Does this friend have a name? It's John, Okay? And you're not going to meet him, unless he's going to stay. But he doesn't. I declare him irresponsible, unstable, self-centered. He says I don't play volleyball, I'm not skinny, and I'm not Evangelical. Then his photographs come down, and his towel. His toothbrush hits the trash. I resume my old ways of keeping house— I don't. Do you think you'll ever remarry, Mom? It's too late, I tell them. I'm running out of towels.

...I came among these hills; when like a roe I bounded over the mountains, by the sides Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams, Wherever nature led: more like a man Flying from something that he dreads, than one Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then ...was to me all in all ...I cannot paint What then I was. The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colors and their forms, were then to me An appetite; a feeling and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, nor any interest Unborrowed from the eye. —That time is past, And all its aching joys are now no more, And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur, other gifts Have followed; for such loss, I would believe, Abundant recompence. For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods, And mountains; and of all that we behold From this green earth; of all the mighty world Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create, And what perceive; well pleased to recognize In nature and the language of the senses The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being.

It is a good lesson — though it may often be a hard one — for a man who has dreamed of literary fame, and of making for himself a rank among the world's dignitaries by such means, to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized, and to find out how utterly devoid of significance, beyond that circle, is all that he achieves, and all he aims at. (...ditto for doctors.)

I am so amazed to find myself kissing you with such abandon, filling myself with our kisses astounding hunger for edges of lips and tongue. Returning to feast again and again, our bellies never overfilling from this banquet. Returning in surprise, in remembering, in rediscovering, such play of flavors of gliding lips and forests of pressures and spaces. The spaces between the branches as delicious as finding the grove of lilies of the valley blossoming just outside my door under the ancient oak. "I've never held anyone this long," you said, the second time you entered my kitchen. I am the feast this kitchen was blessed to prepare waiting for you to enter open mouthed in awe in the mystery we've been given, our holy feast.

Every branch big with it, Bent every twig with it; Every fork like a white web-foot; Every street and pavement mute: Some flakes have lost their way, and grope back upward when Meeting those meandering down they turn and descend again. The palings are glued together like a wall, And there is no waft of wind with the fleecy fall. A sparrow enters the tree, Whereon immediately A snow-lump thrice his own slight size Descends on him and showers his head and eyes, And overturns him, And near inurns him, And lights on a nether twig, when its brush Starts off a volley of other lodging lumps with a rush. The steps are a blanched slope, Up which, with feeble hope, A black cat comes, wide-eyed and thin; And we take him in.

"You can't bury your wife here on the farm," the sheriff said. "That's the law." Olaf Torvik looked up from his chair by the coffin; he did not understand what the sheriff was saying. And why was the sheriff still here, anyway? The funeral was over. They were ready for the burial—a family burial. There should be only Torviks in the living room. "Do you understand what he's saying, Dad?" Einar said. Olaf frowned. He looked to his son, to the rest of the family. "He's saying we can't bury Mom here on the farm," Einar said slowly and deliberately. "He's saying she'll have to be buried in town at Greenacre Cemetery." Olaf shook his head to clear the gray fuzz of loss, of grief, and Einar's words began to settle into sense. But suddenly a fly buzzed like a chainsaw—near the coffin—inside—there, walking the fine white hair on Inge's right temple. Olaf lurched forward, snatching at the fly in the air but missing. Then he bent over her and licked his thumb and smoothed the hair along her temple. Looking down at Inge, Olaf's mind drew itself together, cleared; he remembered the sheriff. "Dad?" Einar said. Olaf nodded. "I'm okay." He turned to the sheriff, John Carlsen, whom he had known for years and who had been at the funeral. "A law?" Olaf said. "What do you mean, John?" "It's a public health ordinance, Olaf," the sheriff said. "The state legislature passed it two years ago. It's statewide. I don't have it with me 'cause I had no idea. . . . The law prohibits home burials." "The boys and me got her grave already dug," Olaf said. "I know," the sheriff said. "I saw it at the funeral. That's why I had to stay behind like this. I mean I hate like hell to be standing here. You should have told me that's the way you wanted to bury her, me or the county commissioners or the judge. Somebody, anyway. Maybe we could have gotten you a permit or something." "Nothing to tell," Olaf said, looking across to Einar and Sarah, to their son Harald and his wife, to Harald's children. "This is a family affair." The sheriff took off his wide-brimmed hat and mopped his forehead with the back of his sleeve. "The times are changing, Olaf. There's more and more people now, so there's more and more laws, laws like this one." Olaf was silent. "I mean," the sheriff continued, "I suppose I'd like to be buried in town right in my own backyard under that red maple we got. But what if everybody did that? First thing you know, people would move away, the graves would go untended and forgotten, and in a few years you wouldn't dare dig a basement or set a post for fear of turning up somebody's coffin." "There's eighteen hundred acres to this farm," Olaf said softly. "That's plenty of room for Inge—and me, too. And nobody in this room is likely to forget where she's buried. None of us Torviks, anyway." The sheriff shook his head side to side. "We're talking about a law here, Olaf. And I'm responsible for the law in this county. I don't make the laws, you understand, but still I got to enforce them. That's my job." Olaf turned and slowly walked across the living room; he stood at the window with his back to the sheriff and the others. He looked out across his farm—the white granaries, the yellow wheat stubble rolling west, and far away, the grove of Norway pine where Inge liked to pick wildflowers in the spring. "She belongs here on the farm," Olaf said softly. "I know what you mean," the sheriff said, and began again to say how sorry . . . Olaf listened but the room came loose, began to drift, compressing itself into one side of his mind, as memories, pictures of Inge pushed in from the past. Olaf remembered one summer evening when the boys were still small and the creek was high and they all went there at sundown after chores and sat on the warm rocks and dangled their white legs in the cold water. "Dad?" Einar said. The sheriff was standing close now, as if to get Olaf's attention. "You been farming here in Hubbard County how long, fifty years?" Olaf blinked. "Fifty-three years." "And I've been sheriff over half that time. I know you, I know the boys. None of you has ever broken a law that I can think of, not even the boys. The town folk respect that . . . ." Olaf's vision cleared and something in him hardened at the mention of town folk. He had never spent much time in town, did not like it there very much. And he believed that, though farmers and townspeople did a lot of business together, it was business of necessity; that in the end they had very little in common. He also had never forgotten how the town folk treated Inge when she first came to Hubbard County. "What I mean is," the sheriff continued, "you don't want to start breaking the law now when you're seventy-five years old." "Seventy-eight," Olaf said. "Seventy-eight," the sheriff repeated. They were all silent. The sheriff mopped his forehead again. The silence went on for a long time. Einar spoke. "Say we went ahead with the burial. Here, like we planned." The sheriff answered to Olaf. "Be just like any other law that was broken. I'd have to arrest you, take you to town. You'd appear before Judge Kruft and plead guilty or not guilty. If you pled guilty, there would be a small fine and you could go home, most likely. Then your wife would be disinterred and brought into town to Greenacre." "What if he was to plead not guilty?" Einar said. The sheriff spoke again to Olaf. "The judge would hold a hearing and review the evidence and pass sentence. Or, you could have a trial by jury." "What do you mean by evidence?" Olaf asked, looking up. That word again after all these years. The sheriff nodded toward the coffin. "Your wife," he said. "She'd be the evidence." Evidence . . . evidence; Olaf's mind began to loop back through time, to when Inge first came from Germany and that word meant everything to them. But by force of will Olaf halted his slide into memory, forced his attention to the present. He turned away from the window. "She told me at the end she should be buried here on the farm," Olaf said softly. They were all silent. The sheriff removed his hat and ran his fingers through his hair. "Olaf," he said, "I've been here long enough today. You do what you think is best. That's all I'll say today." The sheriff's car receded south down the gravel road. His dust hung over the road like a tunnel and Olaf squinted after the car until the sharp July sunlight forced his gaze back into the living room, to his family. "What are we going to do, Dad?" Einar said. Olaf was silent. "I . . . need some time to think," he said. He managed part of a smile. "Maybe alone here with Inge?" The others quietly filed through the doorway, but Einar paused, his hand on the doorknob. "We can't wait too long, Dad," he said quietly. Olaf nodded. He knew what Einar meant. Inge had died on Wednesday. It was now Friday afternoon, and the scent of the wilting chrysanthemums had been joined by a heavier, sweeter smell. "I've sent Harald down to Penske's for some ice," Einar said. Olaf nodded gratefully. He managed part of a smile, and then Einar closed the door to the living room. Olaf sat alone by Inge. He tried to order his thoughts, to think through the burial, to make a decision; instead, his mind turned back to the first time he set eyes upon Inge, the day she arrived in Fargo on the Northern Pacific. His mind lingered there and then traveled further back, to his parents in Norway, who had arranged the marriage of Olaf and Inge. His parents, who had remained and died in Norway, wrote at the end of a letter in June of 1918 about a young German girl who worked for the family on the next farm. They wrote how she wished to come to America; that her family in Germany had been lost in the bombings; that she was dependable and could get up in the morning; that she would make someone a good wife. They did not say what she looked like. Olaf carried his parents' letter with him for days, stopping now and again in the fields, in the barn, to unfold the damp and wrinkled pages and read the last part again—about the young German girl. He wondered what she looked like. But then again, he was not in a position to be too picky about that sort of thing. It was hard to meet young, unmarried women on the prairie because the farms were so far apart, several miles usually, and at day's end Olaf was too tired to go anywhere, least of all courting. He had heard there were lots of young women in Detroit Lakes and Fargo, but he was not sure how to go about finding one in such large cities. Olaf wrote back to his parents and asked more about the German girl. His parents replied that she would be glad to marry Olaf, if he would have her. He wrote back that he would. His parents never did say what she looked like. Because of the war, it was nearly two years later, April of 1920, before Olaf hitched up the big gray Belgian to his best wheat wagon, which he had swept as clean as his bedroom floor, and set off to Fargo to meet Inge's train. It was a long day's ride and there was lots to see—long strings of geese rode the warm winds north, and beyond Detroit Lakes the swells of wheat fields rose up from the snow into black crowns of bare earth. But Olaf kept his eyes to the west, waiting for the first glimpse of Fargo. There were more wagons and cars on the road now, and Olaf stopped nodding to every one as there were far too many. Soon his wagon clattered on paved streets past houses built no more than a fork's handle apart. The Belgian grew skittish and Olaf stopped and put on his blinders before asking the way to the Northern Pacific Railroad station. Inge's train was to arrive at 3:55 p.m. at the main platform. Olaf checked his watch against the station clock—2:28 p.m.—and then reached under the wagon seat. He brought out the smooth cedar shingle with his name, Olaf Leif Torvik, printed on it in large black letters. He placed it back under the seat, then on second thought, after glancing around the station, slipped the shingle inside his wool shirt. Then he grained and watered the Belgian and sat down to wait. At 3:58 her train rumbled into the station and slowly drew to a stop, its iron wheels crackling as they cooled. People streamed off the train. Olaf held up his shingle, exchanging a shy grin with another man—John William Olsen—who also held a name-sign. But there seemed to be few young women on the train, none alone. A short Dutch-looking woman, small-eyed and thick, came toward Olaf—but at the last second passed him by. Olaf did not know whether to give thanks or be disappointed. But if the Dutch-looking woman passed him by, so did all the others. Soon Olaf was nearly alone on the platform. No one else descended from the Pullman cars. Sadly, Olaf lowered his shingle. She had not come. He looked at his shingle again, then let it drop to the platform. He turned back to his wagon. If he was honest with himself, he thought, it all seemed so unlikely anyway; after all, there were lots of men looking for wives, men with more land and money, men certainly better-looking than Olaf. "Maybe my folks made the mistake of showing her my picture," Olaf said to the Belgian, managing a smile as the horse shook his head and showed his big yellow teeth. Olaf wondered if he would ever take a wife. It seemed unlikely. Before he unhitched the Belgian, he turned back to the platform for one last look. There, beside the train, staring straight at him, stood a tall, slim girl of about twenty. Her red hair lit the sky. In one hand she clutched a canvas suitcase, and in the other, Olaf's cedar shingle. Inge Altenburg sat straight in Olaf's wagon seat, her eyes scared and straight ahead; she nodded as Olaf explained, in Norwegian, that there was still time today to see about the marriage. She spoke Norwegian with a heavy German accent, said yes, that is what she had come for. They tried to get married in Fargo, in the courthouse, but a clerk there said that since Olaf was from Minnesota, they should cross the river and try at the courthouse in Moorhead. Olaf explained this to Inge, who nodded. Olaf opened his watch. "What time do they close in Minnesota?" he asked the clerk. "Same as here, five o'clock." It was 4:36; they could still make it today. Olaf kept the Belgian trotting all the way across the Red River Bridge to the Moorhead Courthouse. Inside, with eight minutes to spare, Olaf found the office of the Justice of the Peace; he explained to the secretary their wish to be married, today, if possible. The secretary, a white-haired woman with gold-rimmed glasses, frowned. "It's a bit late today," she said, "but I'll see what I can do. You do have all your papers in order?" she asked of Inge. "Papers?" Olaf said. "Her birth certificate and citizenship papers." Olaf's heart fell. He had not thought of all this. He turned to Inge, who already was reaching under her sweater for the papers. Olaf's hopes soared as quickly as they had fallen. "All right," the secretary said, examining the birth certificate, "now the citizenship papers." Inge frowned and looked questioningly at Olaf. Olaf explained the term. Inge held up her hands in despair. "She just arrived here," Olaf said, "she doesn't have them yet." "I'm so sorry," the secretary said, and began tidying up her desk. Olaf and Inge walked out. Inge's eyes began to fill with tears. "We'll go home to Park Rapids," Olaf told her, "where they know me. There won't be any problem, any waiting, when we get home." Inge nodded, looking down as she wiped her eyes. Olaf reached out and brushed away a teardrop, the first time he had touched her. She flinched, then burst into real tears. Olaf drew back his hand, halfway, but then held her at her shoulders with both his hands. "Ich verstehe," he said softly, "I understand." They stayed that night in a hotel in Detroit Lakes. Olaf paid cash for two single rooms, and they got an early start in the morning. Their first stop was not Olaf's farm, but the Hubbard County Courthouse in Park Rapids. At the same counter Olaf and Inge applied for both her citizenship and their marriage license. When Inge listed her nationality as German, however, the clerk raised an eyebrow in question. He took her papers back to another, larger office; the office had a cloudy waved-glass door and Olaf could see inside, as if underwater, several dark-suited men passing Inge's papers among themselves and murmuring. After a long time—thirty-eight minutes—the clerk returned to the counter. "I'm afraid we have some problems with this citizenship application," he said to Inge. When Inge did not reply, the clerk turned to Olaf. "She speak English?" "I don't believe so, not much anyway." "Well, as I said, there are some problems here." "I can't think of any," Olaf said, "we just want to get married." "But your wife—er, companion—lists that she's a German national." "That's right," Olaf answered, "but she's in America now and she wants to become an American." The clerk frowned. "That's the problem—it might not be so easy. We've got orders to be careful about this sort of thing." "What sort of thing?" "German nationals." "Germans? Like Inge? But why?" "You do realize we've been at war with Germany recently?" the clerk said, pursing his lips. "You read the papers?" Olaf did not bother to answer. "I mean the war's over, of course," the clerk said, "but we haven't received any change of orders regarding German nationals." Olaf laughed. "You think she's a spy or something? This girl?" The clerk folded his arms across his chest. Olaf saw that he should not have laughed, that there was nothing at all to laugh about. "We've got our rules," the clerk said. "What shall we do?" Olaf asked. "What would you recommend?" The clerk consulted some papers. "For a successful citizenship application she'll need references in the form of letters, letters from people who knew her in Germany and Norway, people who can verify where she was born, where she has worked. We especially need to prove that she was never involved in any capacity in German military or German government work." "But that might take weeks," Olaf said. The clerk shrugged. Behind him one of the county commissioners, Sig Hansen, had stopped to listen. "There's nothing else we can do?" Olaf asked, directing his question beyond the clerk to the commissioner. But Sig Hansen shook his head negatively. "Sorry, Olaf, that's out of my control. That's one area I can't help you in." The commissioner continued down the hall. "Sorry," the clerk said, turning to some other papers. With drawn lips Olaf said, "Thanks for your time." They waited for Inge's letters to arrive from Europe. They waited one week, two weeks, five weeks. During this time Olaf slept in the hayloft and Inge took Olaf's bed in the house. She was always up and dressed and had breakfast ready by the time Olaf came in from the barn. Olaf always stopped at the pump house, took off his shirt and washed up before breakfast. He usually stepped outside and toweled off his bare chest in the sunlight; once he noticed Inge watching him from the kitchen window. At breakfast Olaf used his best table manners, making sure to sit straight and hold his spoon correctly. And though they usually ate in silence, the silence was not uncomfortable. He liked to watch her cooking. He liked it when she stood at the wood range with her back to him, flipping pancakes or shaking the skillet of potatoes; he liked the way her body moved, the way strands of hair came loose and curled down her neck. Once she caught him staring. They both looked quickly away, but not before Olaf saw the beginnings of a smile on Inge's face. And it was not long after that, in the evening when it was time for Olaf to retire to the hayloft, that they began to grin foolishly at each other and stay up later and later. Though Olaf was not a religious man, he began to pray for the letters' speedy return. Then it was July. Olaf was in the field hilling up his corn plants when Inge came running, calling out to him as she came, holding up her skirts for speed, waving a package in her free hand. It was from Norway. They knelt in the hot dirt and tore open the wrapping. The letters! Three of them. They had hoped for more, just to make sure, but certainly three would be enough. Olaf and Inge did not even take time to hitch up the wagon, but rode together bareback on the Belgian to Park Rapids. They ran laughing up the courthouse steps, Olaf catching Inge's hand on the way. Once inside, however, they made themselves serious and formal, and carefully presented the letters to the clerk. The clerk examined them without comment. "I'll have to have the Judge look at these," he said, "he's the last word on something like this." The clerk then retreated with their letters down the hall and out of sight. The Judge took a long time with the letters. Twenty minutes. Thirty-nine minutes. Olaf and Inge waited at the clerk's window, holding hands below the cool granite counter. As they waited, Inge began to squeeze Olaf's hand with increasing strength until her fingers dug into his palm and hurt him; he did not tell her, however. Finally the clerk returned. He handed back the letters. "I'm sorry," he said, "but the Judge feels these letters are not sufficient." Olaf caught the clerk's wrist. The clerk's eyes jumped wide and round and scared; he tried to pull back his arm but Olaf had him. "We want to get married, that's all," he said hoarsely. "Wait—" the clerk stammered, his voice higher now, "maybe you should see the Judge yourselves." "That's a damned good idea," Olaf said. He let go of the clerk's arm. The clerk rubbed his wrist and pointed down the hall. Olaf and Inge entered the Judge's chambers, and Olaf's hopes plummeted. All the old books, the seals under glass on the walls, the papers; the white hair and expressionless face of the Judge himself: they all added up to power, to right-of-way. The Judge would have it his way. Olaf explained their predicament. The Judge nodded impatiently and flipped through the letters again. "Perhaps what we should do for you," the Judge said, "is to have you wait on this application for a period of say, one calendar year. If, during that time, it is determined that Inge Ladenburg is loyal and patriotic, then we can consider her for citizenship. And, of course, marriage." "One year!" Olaf exclaimed. The Judge drew back and raised his eyebrows. Sig Hansen, the commissioner, had paused in the doorway. He shook his head at the Judge. "Christ, Herb," he said, "you ought to run it through, let 'em get married. They're harmless. They're just farmers." Inge rose up from her chair. There was iron in her face. "Come—" she commanded Olaf, in English, "it is time we go to home." They rode home slowly, silently. The Belgian sensed their sorrow and kept turning his wide brown eyes back to Olaf. But Olaf had no words for the big animal. Inge held Olaf around his waist. As they came in sight of their buildings she leaned her head on his shoulder and he could feel her crying. They ate their dinner in silence, and then Olaf returned to his cornfield. At supper they were silent again. Come sundown, Olaf climbed the ladder to the hayloft and unrolled his bedroll in the hay. He wished he could have found some good thing to say at supper, but it was not in him. Not tonight. Olaf felt old, tired beyond his thirty-three years. He lay back on the loose prairie hay and watched the sun set in the knotholes of the west barn wall, red, then violet, then purple, then blue shrinking to gray. He hardly remembered going to sleep. But then he knew he must be dreaming. For standing above him, framed in the faint moonlight of the loft, stood Inge. She lay down beside him in the hay and when her hair fell across his face and neck he knew he could not be dreaming. He also knew that few dreams could ever be better than this. And in his long life with Inge, none were. Olaf rose from his chair by her casket. That night when she came to him in the loft was forty-five years past. That night was Olaf's last in the hayloft, for they considered themselves married, come morning—married by body, by heart, and by common law. And Inge never forgot her treatment at the Hubbard County Courthouse in Park Rapids; she rarely shopped in the town, preferring instead Detroit Lakes, which was twelve miles farther but contained no unpleasant memories. Nor did she become a citizen; she remained instead without file or number, nonexistent to federal, state, or local records. She was real, Olaf thought, only to those who knew her, who loved her. And that, Olaf suddenly understood, was the way she should remain. As in her life, her death. Before Olaf called the family back into the room, he thought he should try to pray. He got down on his knees on the wood floor by the coffin and folded his hands. He waited, but no words came. He wondered if he had forgotten how to pray. Olaf knew that he believed in a great God of some kind. He had trouble with Jesus, but with God there was no question. He ran into God many times during the year: felt of him in the warm field-dirt of May; saw his face in the shiny harvest grain; heard his voice among the tops of the Norway pines. But he was not used to searching him out, to calling for him. Nor could he now. Olaf found he could only cry. Long, heaving sobs and salty tears that dripped down his wrists to the floor. He realized, with surprise, that this was the first time he had cried since Inge's death; that his tears in their free flowing were a kind of prayer. He realized, too, that God was with him these moments. Right here in this living room. When the family reassembled, Olaf told them his decision. He spoke clearly, resolutely. "We will bury Inge here on the farm as we planned," he said, "but in a little different fashion." He outlined what they would do, asked if anyone disagreed, if there were any worries. There were none. "All right then, that's settled," Olaf said. He looked around the room at his family—Einar, Sarah, the children, the others. "And do you know what else we should do?" Olaf said. No one said anything. "Eat!" Olaf said. "I'm mighty hungry." The others laughed, and the women turned to the kitchen. Soon they all sat down to roast beef, boiled potatoes with butter, dill pickles, wheat bread, strong black coffee, and pie. During lunch Harald returned with the ice. Einar excused himself from the table and went to help Harald. Once he returned and took from a cupboard some large black plastic garbage bags. Olaf could hear them working in the living room, and once Einar said, "Don't let it get down along her side, there." Olaf did not go into the living room while they worked. He poured himself another cup of coffee, which, strangely, made him very tired. He tried to remember when he had slept last. Sarah said to him, "Perhaps you should rest a little bit before we . . . ." Olaf nodded. "You're right," he said, "I'll go upstairs and lie down a few minutes. Just a few minutes." Olaf started awake at the pumping thuds of the John Deere starting. He sat up quickly—too quickly, nearly pitching over, and pushed aside the curtain. It was late—nearly dark. How could he have slept so long? It was time. He hurriedly laced his boots and pulled on a heavy wool jacket over his black suit-coat. Downstairs, the women and children were sitting in the kitchen, dressed and waiting for him. "We would have wakened you," Sarah said. Olaf grinned. "I thought for a minute there. . . ." Then he buttoned his coat and put on a woolen cap. He paused at the door. "One of the boys will come for you when everything is ready," he said to Sarah. "We know," she said. Outside, the sky was bluish purple and Harald was running the little John Deere tractor in the cow lot. The tractor carried a front-end loader and Harald was filling the scoop with fresh manure. Beyond the tractor some of the Black Angus stretched stiffly and snorted at the disturbance. Harald drove out of the lot when the scoop was rounded up and dripping. He stopped by the machine shed, went inside, and returned with two bags of commercial nitrogen fertilizer. "Just to make sure, Grandpa," he said. His smile glinted white in the growing dark. "Won't hurt," Olaf said. Then he tried to think of other things they would need. "Rope," Olaf said. "And a shovel." Then he saw both on the tractor. "Everything's ready," Harald said, pointing to the little John Deere. "She's all yours. We'll follow." Olaf climbed up to the tractor's seat and then backed away from the big machine-shed doors. Einar and Harald rolled open the mouth of the shed and went inside. The noise of their two big tractors stiffly startled Olaf, even in daylight, and he backed up farther as the huge, dual-tandem John Deeres rumbled out of their barn. A single tire on them, he realized, was far bigger than the old Belgian he used to have. And maybe that's why he never drove the big tractors. Actually, he'd never learned, hadn't wished to. He left them to the boys, who drove them as easily as Olaf drove the little tractor. Though they always frightened him a little, Olaf's long wheat fields called for them—especially tonight. Behind each of the big tractors, like an iron spine with twelve shining ribs, rode a plow. Olaf led the caravan of tractors. They drove without lights into the eighty-acre field directly west from the yellow-lit living-room window of the house. At what he sensed was the middle of the field, Olaf halted. He lowered the manure and fertilizer onto the ground. Then, with the front-end digger, he began to unearth Inge's grave. Einar and Harald finished the sides of the grave with shovels. Standing out of sight in the hole, their showers of dirt pumped rhythmically up and over the side. Finished, they climbed up and brushed themselves off, and then walked back to the house for the others. Olaf waited alone by the black hole. He stared down into its darkness and realized that he probably would not live long after Inge, and yet felt no worry or fear. For he realized there was, after all, a certain order to the events and times of his life: all the things he had worked for and loved were now nearly present. Behind, he heard the faint rattle of the pickup. He turned to watch it come across the field toward the grave. Its bumper glinted in the moonlight, and behind, slowly walking, came the dark shapes of his family. In the bed of the pickup was Inge's coffin. The truck stopped alongside the grave. Einar turned off the engine and then he and Harald lifted the coffin out and onto the ground. The family gathered around. Sarah softly sang "Rock of Ages," and then they said together the Twenty-third Psalm. Olaf could not speak past "The Lord is my. . . ." Then it was over. Einar climbed onto the tractor and raised the loader over the coffin. Harald tied ropes to the loader's arms and looped them underneath and around the coffin. Einar raised the loader until the ropes tightened and lifted the long dark box off the ground. Harald steadied the coffin, kept it from swinging, as Einar drove forward until the coffin was over the dark hole. Olaf stepped forward toward it as if to—to what? Einar turned questioningly toward Olaf. "Now, Dad?" he said. Olaf nodded. Swaying slightly in the moonlight, the coffin slowly sank into the grave. There was a scraping sound as it touched bottom. Harald untied the ropes and then Einar began to push forward the mound of earth; the sound of dirt thumping on the coffin seemed to fill the field. When the grave was half filled, Einar backed the tractor to the pile of manure and pushed it forward into the hole. Harald carried the two bags of nitrogen fertilizer to the grave, slit their tops, and poured them in after the manure. Then Einar filled in the earth and scattered what was left over until the grave was level with the surrounding field. Olaf tried to turn away, but could not walk. For with each step he felt the earth rising up to meet his boots as if he were moving into some strange room, an enormous room, one that went on endlessly. He thought of his horses, his old team. He heard himself murmur some word that only they would understand. "Come, Dad," Sarah said, taking Olaf by the arm. "It's over." Olaf let himself be led into the pickup. Sarah drove him and the children to the field's edge by the house where Einar had parked the little John Deere. "You coming inside now?" Sarah asked as she started the children toward the house. "No, I'll wait here until the boys are finished," Olaf said, "you go on ahead." Even as he spoke the big tractors rumbled alive. Their running lights flared on and swung around as Einar and Harald drove to the field's end near Olaf. They paused there a moment, side by side, as their plows settled onto the ground. Then their engine RPMs came up and the tractors, as one, leaned into their work and headed straight downfield toward Inge's grave. The furrows rolled up shining in the night light. Olaf knew this earth. It was heavy soil, had never failed him. He knew also that next year, and nearly forever after—there would be one spot in the middle of the field where the wheat grew greener, taller, and more golden than all the rest. It would be the gravestone made of wheat. Olaf sat on the little tractor in the darkness until the boys had plowed the field black from side to side. Then they put away the tractors and fed the Angus. After that they ate breakfast, and went to bed at dawn.

Prolonged, they slacken into pain or sadness in accordance with the law of apples. One apple satisfies. Two apples cloy. Three apples glut. Call it a tug-of-war between enough and more than enough, between sufficiency and greed, between the stay-at-homers and globe-trotting see-the-worlders. Like lovers seeking heaven in excess, the hopelessly insatiable forget how passion sharpens appetites that gross indulgence numbs. Result? The haves have not what all the have-nots have since much of having is the need to have. Even my dog knows that—and more than that. He slumbers in a moon of sunlight, scratches his twitches and itches in measure, savors every bite of grub with equal gratitude and stays determinedly in place unless what's suddenly exciting happens. Viewing mere change as threatening, he relishes a few undoubtable and proven pleasures to enjoy each day in sequence and with canine moderation. They're there for him in waiting, and he never wears them out.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand; A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

I am waiting for my case to come up and I am waiting for a rebirth of wonder and I am waiting for someone to really discover America and wail and I am waiting for the discovery of a new symbolic western frontier and I am waiting for the American Eagle to really spread its wings and straighten up and fly right and I am waiting for the Age of Anxiety to drop dead and I am waiting for the war to be fought which will make the world safe for anarchy and I am waiting for the final withering away of all governments and I am perpetually awaiting a rebirth of wonder I am waiting for the second coming and I am waiting for a religious revival to sweep thru the state of Arizona and I am waiting for the grapes of wrath to be stored and I am waiting for them to prove that God is really American and I am waiting to see God on television piped into church altars if they can find the right channel to tune it in on and I am waiting for the last supper to be served again with a strange new appetizer and I am perpetually awaiting a rebirth of wonder I am waiting for my number to be called and I am waiting for the Salvation Army to take over and I am waiting for the meek to be blessed and inherit the earth without taxes and I am waiting for forests and animals to reclaim the earth as theirs and I am waiting for a way to be devised to destroy all nationalisms without killing anybody and I am waiting for linnets and planets to fall like rain and I am waiting for lovers and weepers to lie down together again in a new rebirth of wonder I am waiting for the great divide to be crossed and I am anxiously waiting for the secret of eternal life to be discovered by an obscure practitioner and I am waiting for the storms of life to be over and I am waiting to set sail for happiness and I am waiting for a reconstructed Mayflower to reach America with its picture story and TV rights sold in advance to the natives and I am waiting for the lost music to sound again in the Lost Continent in a new rebirth of wonder I am waiting for the day that maketh all things clear and I am waiting for retribution for what America did to Tom Sawyer and I am waiting for the American Boy to take off Beauty's clothes and get on top of her and I am waiting for Alice in Wonderland to retransmit to me her total dream of innocence and I am waiting for Childe Roland to come to the final darkest tower and I am waiting for Aphrodite to grow live arms at a final disarmament conference in a new rebirth of wonder I am waiting to get some intimations of immortality by recollecting my early childhood and I am waiting for the green mornings to come again for some strains of unpremeditated art to shake my typewriter and I am waiting to write the great indelible poem and I am waiting for the last long rapture and I am perpetually waiting for the fleeting lovers on the Grecian Urn to catch each other up at last and embrace and I am awaiting perpetually and forever a renaissance of wonder

Heather Mills finally announced her divorce settlement of £24.3 million with all the shy grace and modesty which we have come to expect of Lady McCartney. Unstoppable as the Duracell bunny, gobbier than Sharon Osbourne, enjoying the same firm grasp on reality as Mohamed Al Fayed and with more issues than Reader's Digest, the poor coppers on duty behind the ranting Heather started to nod off. On the roof of nearby St Paul's Cathedral, pigeons slipped into a coma and fell to their deaths as Heather began her 97th sentence without drawing breath. On and on she moaned. Who says you can't turn sour grapes into whine? Paul McCartney had just parted with almost 25 million quid to be shot of this woman. Worth every penny, Paul, love. You know what they say: Marry in haste, repent at heather. Mills is comically oblivious to how she comes across. In some compartment of that mad fantasist's brain, she honestly believes she is the big-hearted "Campaigning Girl" raking in alimony to hand it over "to me charities." To the rest of us she is the worst kind of Nouveau Celeb—gauche, greedy, self-obsessed and constantly carping about the media while taking out a 999-year lease on the limelight. Even the judge had to conclude that Ms Mills's evidence was, ahem, "less than candid." How did Heather think it would go down when she moaned that the £35,000-a-year allocated to her daughter would not be enough to fly Beatrice "A-Class"? Puts that little crisis in Darfur into perspective, doesn't it, pet? Millions are starving but, for Lady Mucca, hardship is a four-year-old rock princess roughing it in Business. Besides, thirty-five grand sounds plenty to me. Enough for a few party frocks and the rest to go on a therapist when the poor kid is old enough to realise what sort of mother she's been landed with. Heather may have bagged herself a title, but she never did acquire any class. Chucking water over Fiona Shackleton, Paul's solicitor, was cheap. It was also cheap to bitch about the ex-Beatle's "low offer of 15.8" (that's millions, in case you were wondering). Heather had set her sights on a jaw-dropping £125 million for an exhausting four years of marriage. Normally, I am the first person to insist that a divorced wife gets an equal share of the cake. But Heather Mills made a mockery of marriage. She was only two weeks away from her wedding to film-maker Chris Terrill when she announced she was getting together with Paul. The love for this multi-millionaire was so powerful that, overnight, Lancashire hotpot-loving Heather discovered she had been a vegan all along! Heather is brilliant at faking it. She could be anything a man wanted her to be. And she saw that what widower Paul wanted her to be was Linda. No wonder Stella McCartney hated her. Talk about the Wicked Stepmother. Frankly, I have more respect for Ashley Dupré, who provided escort services to disgraced New York governor Eliot Spitzer for $1,000 an hour. At least Ashley made her price clear up front and never claimed to be doing it for charity. As the old joke goes: A gold-digger married the guy for money. She divorced him for the same reason. Now, who does that sound like?

He remembered her birthday every year, not just the day but the hour she was born, and brought her coffee before she was awake, and never once forgot the way she liked it. He fixed the things that broke without being asked, and asked about the things that couldn't be fixed. He listened with his whole face, not just his ears. He said I love you like it was still news. He was not perfect. He was sometimes wrong and said so, which is harder than being right. He made her laugh on the days she couldn't cry and held her on the days she couldn't laugh. When she was sick he sat beside the bed and read to her from books she hadn't chosen. He was the kind of man who, when he left a room, left something of himself still in it.

Among mammals, expecting monogamy tends to run against the grain of nature. As an evolutionary biologist, I look at New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's now-public sexual indiscretions and feel justified in saying, "I told you so." One of the most startling discoveries of the last 15 years has been the extent of sexual infidelity (scientists call it "extra-pair copulations" or EPCs) among animals long thought to be monogamous. It's clear that social monogamy—physical association and child rearing between a male and a female—and sexual monogamy are very different things. The former is common; the latter is rare. At one point in the movie "Heartburn," Nora Ephron's barely fictionalized account of her marriage to reporter Carl Bernstein, the heroine tearfully tells her father about her husband's infidelities, only to be advised, "You want monogamy? Marry a swan." Yet thanks to DNA evidence, we know now that even those famously loyal swans aren't sexually monogamous. One species that is, and, significantly, perhaps the only one that could be reliably designated as such, is Diplozöon paradoxum, a parasitic worm that inhabits the intestines of fish. Among these animals, male and female pair up while adolescents; their bodies literally fuse together, whereupon they remain sexually faithful until death does not them part. One of the most important insights of modern evolutionary biology has been an enhanced understanding of male-female differences, deriving especially from the production of sperm versus eggs. Because sperm are produced in vast numbers, with little if any required parental follow-through, males of most species are aggressive sexual adventurers, inclined to engage in sex with multiple partners when they can. Males who succeed in doing so leave more descendants. A story is told in New Zealand about the early 19th century visit of an Episcopal bishop to an isolated Maori village. As everyone was about to retire after an evening of high-spirited feasting and dancing, the village headman—wanting to show sincere hospitality to his honored guest—called out, "A woman for the bishop." Seeing a scowl of disapproval on the prelate's face, the host roared even louder, "Two women for the bishop!" On balance, the Maori headman had an acute understanding of men. He also reflected a powerful cross-cultural universal: Around the world, high-ranking men have long enjoyed sexual access to comparatively large numbers of women, typically young and attractive. "Power," wrote Henry Kissinger, "is the ultimate aphrodisiac." Power-as-pheromone is pretty much the default among mammals. Elk, elephant seal, baboon or chimpanzee, in a wide array of species, females eagerly mate with dominant males while disdaining subordinates. And they do so, more or less, in harems. Not surprisingly, before the homogenization of cultures that resulted from Western colonialism, more than 85% of human societies unabashedly favored polygamy. In such societies, men who accumulate power, wealth and status gain additional wives and consorts. In avowedly monogamous cultures, successful males accumulate a wife and often additional girlfriends. All of which contributes to the apparent sex appeal of such less-than-stunning physical specimens as Kissinger, Woody Allen and Bill Clinton, not to mention the persistence of sex scandals among the popular and powerful across the political and ideological spectrum, including Thomas Jefferson, JFK, Hugh Grant, Newt Gingrich, Larry Craig and a long list, receding almost to the infinite past as well as likely into the indefinite future. For men at the top—rock stars, successful athletes, politicians, wealthy CEOs, the jet-set glitterati—such opportunities are exceedingly numerous, not so much because they have insatiable sex drives but because they are dominant males in a biologically randy species. Some readers may bridle at this characterization of Homo sapiens as EPC-inclined, but the evidence is overwhelming. That doesn't justify adultery, by either sex, especially because human beings—even those burdened by a Y chromosome and suffering from testosterone poisoning—are presumed capable of exercising control over their impulses. Especially if, via wedding vows, they have promised to do so. After all, "doing what comes naturally" is what nonhuman animals do. People, most of us like to think, have the unique capacity to act contrary to their biologically given inclinations. Maybe, in fact, it is what makes us human. But even a smidgen of evolutionary insight suggests that maleness plus money plus political power isn't likely to add up to the kind of sexual restraint that the public expects. A concluding word, therefore, to the outraged voters of New York state: You want monogamy? Elect a swan. Or better yet, a Diplozöon paradoxum. — David P. Barash, an evolutionary biologist, is professor of psychology at the University of Washington.