Longing

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  On dark rainy evenings I would load the lamp of my bicycle with magical lumps of calcium carbide, shield a match from the gusty wind and, having imprisoned a white flame in the glass, ride cautiously into the darkness. The circle of light cast by my lamp would pick out the damp, smooth shoulder of the road, between its central system of puddles and the long bordering grasses. Like a tottering ghost, the pale ray would weave across a clay bank at the turn as I began the downhill ride toward the river. Beyond the bridge the road sloped up again to meet the Rozhestveno—Luga highway, and just above that junction a footpath among dripping jasmin bushes ascended a steep escarpment. I had to dismount and push my bicycle. As I reached the top, my livid light flitted across the six-pillared white portico at the back of my uncle’s mute, shuttered manor—as mute and shuttered as it may be today, half a century later. There, in a corner of that arched shelter, from where she had been following the zigzags of my ascending light, Tamara would be waiting, perched on the broad parapet with her back to a pillar. I would put out my lamp and grope my way toward her. One is moved to speak more eloquently about these things, about many other things that one always hopes might survive captivity in the zoo of words—but the ancient limes crowding close to the house drown Mnemosyne’s monologue with their creaking and heaving in the restless night. Their sigh would subside. The rain pipe at one side of the porch, a small busybody of water, could be heard steadily bubbling. At times, some additional rustle, troubling the rhythm of the rain in the leaves, would cause Tamara to turn her head in the direction of an imagined footfall, and then, by a faint luminosity—now rising above the horizon of my memory despite all that rain—I could distinguish the outline of her face; but there was nothing and nobody to fear, and presently she would gently exhale the breath she had held for a moment and her eyes would close again. 2With the coming of winter our reckless romance was transplanted to grim St. Petersburg. We found ourselves horribly deprived of the sylvan security we had grown accustomed to. Hotels disreputable enough to admit us stood beyond the limits of our daring, and the great era of parked amours was still remote. The secrecy that had been so pleasurable in the country now became a burden, yet neither of us could face the notion of chaperoned meetings at her home or mine. Consequently, we were forced to wander a good deal about the town (she, in her little gray-furred coat, I, white-spatted and karakul-collared, with a knuckle-duster in my velvet-lined pocket), and this permanent quest for some kind of refuge produced an odd sense of hopelessness, which, in its turn, foreshadowed other, much later and lonelier, roamings.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  IV No one you were can come so close to death without dying into another Martha. I await you as we all await her fearing her honesty fearing we may neither love nor dismiss Martha with the dross burned away fearing condemnation from the essential. You cannot get closer to death than this Martha the nearest you’ve come to living yourself Sowing It is the sink of the afternoon the children asleep or weary. I have finished planting the tomatoes in this brief sun after four days of rain now there is brown earth under my fingernails And sun full on my skin with my head thick as honey the tips of my fingers are stinging from the rich earth but more so from the lack of your body I have been to this place before where blood seething commanded my fingers fresh from the earth dream of plowing a furrow whose name should be you. Making it My body arcing across your white place we mingle color and substance wanting to mantle your cold I share my face with you but love becomes a lie as we suffer through split masks seeking the other half-self. We are hung up in giving what we wish to be given ourselves. On a night of the full moon I Out of my flesh that hungers and my mouth that knows comes the shape I am seeking for reason. The curve of your body fits my waiting hand your flesh warm as sunlight your lips quick as young birds between your thighs the sweet sharp taste of limes. Thus I hold you frank in my heart’s eye in my skin’s knowing as my fingers conceive your flesh I feel your stomach curving against me. Before the moon wanes again we shall come together. II And I would be the moon spoken over your beckoning flesh breaking against reservations beaching thought my hands at your high tide over and under inside you and the passing of hungers attended, forgotten. Darkly risen the moon speaks my eyes judging your roundness delightful. from From a Land Where Other People Live (1973) Progress Report These days when you do say hello I am never sure if you are being saucy or experimental or merely protecting some new position.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  She thanked me and a day or two later came to me in the classroom with another puzzle and so our acquaintance ripened. Almost at once she let me kiss her; but as soon as I tried to put my hand up her clothes, she stopped me. We were friends for nearly a year, close friends, and I remember trying all I knew one Saturday when I spent the whole day with her in our classroom, till dusk came and I could not get her to yield. The curious thing was I could not even soothe the smart to my vanity with the belief that she was physically cold: on the contrary she was very passionate; but she had simply made up her mind and would not change. That Saturday in the classroom she told me if she yielded she would hate me: I could see no sense in this, even though I was to find out later what a terrible weapon the Confessional is as used by Irish Catholic Priests. To commit a sin is easy; to confess it to your priest is for many women an absolute deterrent. A few days later, I think, I got a letter from Smith that determined me to go to Philadelphia as soon as my hoardings provided me with sufficient money. I wrote and told him I’d come and cheered him up: I had not long to wait. Early that fall Bradlaugh came to lecture in Liberty Hall on the French Revolution—a giant of a man with a great head, rough-hewn, irregular features and stentorian voice: no better figure of a rebel could be imagined. I knew he had been an English private soldier for a dozen years; but I soon found that in spite of his passionate revolt against the Christian religion and all its cheap moralistic conventions, he was a convinced individualist and saw nothing wrong in the despotism of Money which had already established itself in Britain, though condemned by Carlyle at the end of his “French Revolution” as the vilest of all tyrannies. Bradlaugh’s speech taught me that a notorious and popular man, earnest and gifted, too, and intellectually honest might be fifty years before his time in one respect and fifty years behind the best opinion of the age in another province of thought. In the great conflict of our day between the “Haves” and the “Have-nots”, Bradlaugh played no part whatever: he wasted his great powers in a vain attack on the rotten branches of the Christian tree, while he should have assimilated the spirit of Jesus and used it to gild his loyalty to truth. About this time Kate wrote that she would not be back for some weeks: she declared she was feeling another woman; I felt tempted to write, “So am I, stay as long as you please”; but instead I wrote an affectionate, tempting letter; for I had a real affection for her, I discovered.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Like quality time, parallel parenting—a term coined by mediators to mean that two parents who raise a child separately are comparable to two parents who raise a child together—is a great slogan, but it can’t replicate the cooperative parenting that children and parents need. In a good intact family, a constant parental dialogue revolves around the day’s events and interactions within the family. Daily conversations and the pillow talk that follows literally shape the child’s environment to fit her needs as she grows up and changes. Such parental dialogue, if it existed, is abruptly shut off by divorce. As a result, the role of the parents as the child’s champion is weakened. This is a serious loss in our crowded, fast-moving society, especially for the child who has special needs or who may be a late or an early bloomer. Of course single parents can take on this role to the extent that their busy schedule permits, but as they often tell me, they feel weighed down by the responsibility for making all the decisions themselves and by the pressures of time. Remarried parents can and do reinstate the invisible parenting structure, but that may not happen for several years. Even then, it takes on a different cast, as we’ll see later in the book. ONE When a Child Becomes the Caregiver K aren James’s visit drove me to continue probing the long-term effects of divorce on children. The minute she left, I went to my study and drew out her family’s record to refresh my memory. I have copious files on each family member in our study, including verbatim transcripts of past interviews, letters from teachers, notes describing dollhouse play, children’s drawings, comments from parents about their own lives and their beliefs about their children, comments from children showing an astonishing difference in perceptions, and my own margin notes about what each family represents. The first item that caught my eye was a drawing Karen had done when we met. (Children’s drawings often tell you what they are feeling and reveal far more than spoken words.) Karen had depicted each member of her family in meticulous detail—her mother, father, eight-year-old brother Kevin, and six-year-old sister Sharon. Dressed in bright colors, they were standing very close together, each smiling broadly. Even the cat was smiling. “My Family” was printed across the top in large block letters. I was intrigued by Karen’s capacity to maintain an image of serenity in her drawing because by now I was privy to the shrieking disorganization in her family life. Karen’s wish for peace and family togetherness was poignantly clear. As I was to learn, this was the central desire of her life. The James divorce totally bewildered the children.

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  GIOVANNI'S ROOM 9 fast, and laughing, and watching the men. That was how I met her, in a bar in Saint-Germain- des-Pres, she was drinking and watching, and that was why I liked her, I thought she would be fun to have fun with. That was how it began, that was all it meant to me; I am not sure now, in spite of everything, that it ever really meant more than that to me. And I don't think it ever really meant more than that to her— at least not until she made that trip to Spain and, find- ing herself there, alone, began to wonder, per- haps, if a lifetime of drinking and watching the men was exactly what she wanted. But it was too late by that time. I was already with Gio- vanni. I had asked her to marry me before she went away to Spain; and she laughed and I laughed but that, somehow, all the same, made it more serious for me, and I persisted; and then she said she would have to go away and think about it. And the very last night she was here, the very last time I saw her, as she was pack- ing her bag, I told her that I had loved her once and I made myself believe it. But I wonder if I had. I was thinking, no doubt, of our nights in bed, of the peculiar innocence and confidence, which will never come again, which had made those nights so delightful, so unrelated to past, present, or anything to come, so unrelated, finally, to my life since it was not necessary for me to take any but the most mechanical respon- sibility for them. And these nights were being acted out under a foreign sky, with no one to iO James Baldwin watch, no penalties attached—it was this last fact which was our undoing, for nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom. I suppose this was why I asked her to marry me: to give myself something to be moored to. Per- haps this was why, in Spain, she decided that she wanted to marry me. But people can't, un- happily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can in- vent their parents. life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  Once she was all the sums of her knowing counting on her to sustain them once she was more somebody else’s mother than mine now she weighs faces as once she weighed grapefruit. Waiting she does not count her change Her lonely eyes measure all who enter the market are they new are they old enough can they buy each other? To The Girl Who Lives In A Tree A letter in my mailbox says you’ve made it to Honduras and I wonder what is the colour of the wood you are chopping now. When you left this city I wept for a year down 14th Street across the Taconic Parkway through the shingled birdcotes along Riverside Drive and I was glad because in your going you left me a new country where Riverside Drive became an embattlement that even dynamite could not blast free where making both love and war became less inconsistent and as my tears watered morning I became my own place to fathom While part of me follows you still thru the woods of Oregon splitting dead wood with a rusty axe acting out the nightmares of your mothers creamy skin soot-covered from communal fires where you provide and labour to discipline your dreams whose symbols are immortalized in lies of history told like fairy tales called power behind the throne called noble frontier drudge and we both know you are not white with rage or fury but only from bleeding too much while trudging behind a wagon and confidentially did you really conquer Donner Pass with only a handcart? My mothers nightmares are not yours but just as binding. If in your sleep you tasted a child’s blood on your teeth while your chained black hand could not rise to wipe away his death upon your lips perhaps you would consider then why I choose this brick and shitty stone over the good earth’s challenge of green. Your mothers nightmares are not mine but just as binding. We share more than a trap between our legs where long game howl back and forth across country finding less than what they bargained for but more than they ever feared so dreams or not, I think you will be back soon from Honduras where the woods are even thicker than in Oregon.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  With your voice in my ears with my voice in your ears try to deny me I will hunt you down through the night veins of my own addiction through all my unsatisfied childhoods as this poem unfolds like the leaves of a poppy I have no sister no mother no children left only a tideless ocean of moonlit women in all shades of loving learning a dance of open and closing learning a dance of electrical tenderness no father no mother would teach them. Come Sambo dance with me pay the piper dangling dancing his knee high darling over your wanting under your bloody white faces come Bimbo come Ding Dong watch the city falling down down down lie down bitch slow down nigger so you want a cozy womb to hide you to pucker up and suck you back safely well I tell you what I’m gonna do next time you head for the hatchet really need some nook to hole up in look me up I’m the ticket taker on a queen of rollercoasters I can get you off cheap. This is a simple poem sharing my head with the dream of a big black woman with jewels in her eyes she dances her head in a golden helmet arrogant plumed her name is Colossa her thighs are like stanchions or flayed hickory trees embraced in armour she dances in slow earth shaking motions that suddenly alter and lighten as she whirls laughing tooled metal over her hips comes to an end and at the shiny edge an astonishment of soft black curly hair. Between Ourselves Once when I walked into a room my eyes would seek out the one or two black faces for contact or reassurance or a sign I was not alone now walking into rooms full of black faces that would destroy me for any difference where shall my eyes look? Once it was easy to know who were my people. If we were stripped of all pretense to our strength and our flesh was cut away the sun would bleach all our bones as white as the face of my black mother was bleached white by gold or Orishala and how does that measure me? I do not believe our wants have made all our lies holy. Under the sun on the shores of Elmina a black man sold the woman who carried my grandmother in her belly he was paid with bright yellow coins that shone in the evening sun and in the faces of her sons and daughters.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “I could give you supper,” she added, “my lips too, that long for you and—and—but you know” she added regretfully, “he might come in and I want to know you better first before seeing you together: a young God and a man!—and the man in God’s likeness, yet so poor an imitation!” “Don’t, don’t,” I said, “you’ll make life harder for yourself—” “Harder” she repeated with a sniff of contempt, “Kiss me, my love and go if you must. Shall I see you tomorrow? There!” she cried as with a curse, “I’ve given myself away: I can’t help it, oh how I want you always: how I shall long for you and count the dull dreary hours! Go, go or I’ll never let you”—and she kissed and clung to me to the door. “Sweet—tomorrow”, I said and tore off. Of course it is manifest that my liaison with Mrs. Mayhew had little or nothing to do with love. It was demoniac youthful sex-urge in me and much the same hunger in her and as soon as the desire was satisfied my judgment of her was as impartial, cool as if she had always been indifferent to me. But with her I think there was a certain attachment and considerable tenderness. In intimate relations between the sexes it is rare indeed that the man gives as much to love as the woman. Professor Byron. C. Smith: 1872. * * * SOME STUDY, MORE LOVE. Chapter X. Supper at the Gregory’s was almost over when I entered the dining-room: Kate and her mother and father and the boy Tommy were seated at the end of the table, taking their meal: the dozen guests had all finished and disappeared. Mrs. Gregory hastened to rise and Kate got up to follow her mother into the neighbouring kitchen. “Please don’t get up!” I cried to the girl, “I’d never forgive myself for interrupting you: I’ll wait on myself or on you”, I added smiling, “if you wish anything—” She looked at me with hard, indifferent eyes and sniffed scornfully: “If you’ll sit there”, she said, pointing to the other end of the table, “I’ll bring you supper: do you take coffee or tea?” “Coffee, please,” I answered and took the seat indicated, at once making up my mind to be cold to her while winning the others. Soon the boy began asking me had I ever seen any Indians—“in warpaint and armed, I mean” he added eagerly. “Yes and shot at them, too”, I replied smiling. Tommy’s eyes gleamed—“Oh tell us!” he panted and I knew I could always count on one good listener! “I’ve lots to tell, Tommy,” I said, “but now I must eat my supper at express rate or your sister’ll be angry—” I added as Kate came in with some steaming food: she pulled a face and shrugged her shoulders with contempt. “Where do you preach?” I asked the grey-haired father, “my brother says you’re really eloquent—”

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  GIOVANNI'S ROOM 87 himself into myarmsas thoughhe were giving me himself to carry, and slowly pulled medown with him to that bed. With everything in me screaming No! yetthe sum of mesighedYes. Hereinthe southofFranceitdoesnot often snow; but snowfiakes, inthe beginning rather gently andnow with moreforce,have been faUing forthelast half hour. It fallsasthough it might quitepossibly decidetoturninto a blizzard.It has been cold down here thiswinter, though thepeopleofthe regionseem to take it asa markof ill-breedingina foreignerif he makes any reference tothis fact. Theythem- selves, evenwhen their faces areburning inthat windwhichseems toblow fromeverywhere at once,and whichpenetrateseverything, are as radiantly cheerful as children attheseashore. 'II fait beaubien? —throwingtheir faces toward the lowering sky inwhich thecelebrated south- emsun has not made an appearancein days. I leave the window of thebig room and walk through the house. While I amin the kitchen, staring into the mirror — I have decided to shave before all the water turns cold —I hear a knock- ing at the door. Some vague, wildhopeleaps in me for a second and then I realize that it isonly the caretaker from across the road cometo make certain that Ihave not stolenthe silver or smashed the dishes or chopped up thefurniture for firewood. And, indeed, she rattles the door 88 James Baldwin and I hear her voice out there, cracking, M'sieul M'sieul WsieUy Vamericainr I wonder, with annoyance, why on earth she should sound so worried. But she smiles at once when I open the door, asmile which weds the coquette and the mother. She is quite old and not really French; she came many years ago, 'when Iwas avery young girl, sir,' from just across the border, out of Italy. She seems, like mostof the women down here, to have gone into mourning directly thelast child moved outofchildhood. Hella thought that they wereall widows, but,it turned out, most of them had husbands living yet. These husbands might have beentheirsons. They sometimes playedbelote inthesunshine in aflat field near our house, and theireyes, whenthey looked atHella, contained the proud watchfulness of a fatherandthewatchful speculation of a man. I sometimes playedbil- liards with them,and drank redwine,inthe tabac. Butthey made me tense — withtheir ribaldries, their good-nature, theirfellowship, theUfewritten on theirhands andintheir faces and intheireyes. They treated me asthe sonwhohasbut lately been initiated intoman- hood;but atthesame time, with great distance, forI didnotreally belong to anyof them; and they also sensed (orIfelt they did) something elseabout me, something whichitwas nolonger worth theirwhileto pursue. Thisseemed to be in theireyes when Iwalked with Hella and

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  Walking backward I fall into summers behind me salt with wanting lovers or friends a job wider shoes a cool drink freshness something to bite into a place to hide out of the rain out of the shifting melange of seasons where the cruel boys I chased and their skinny dodgeball sisters flamed and died in becoming the brown autumn left in search of who tore the streamers down at graduation christmas my wedding day and as winter wore out the babies came angry effort and reward in their appointed seasons my babies tore out of me like poems after I slept and woke to the thought that promise had come again this time more sure than the dream of being sweet sixteen and somebody else walking five miles through the august city with a free dog thinking now we will be the allamerican family we had just gotten a telephone and the next day my sister cut his leash on Broadway that dog of my childhood bays at the new moon as I reach into time up to my elbows extracting the taste and sharp smell of my first lover’s neck rough as the skin of a brown pear ripening I was terribly sure I would come forever to april with my first love who died on a sunday morning poisoned and wondering would summer ever come. As I face an ocean of seasons they start to separate into distinct and particular faces listening to the cover beginning to crack open and whether or not the fruit is worth waiting thistles and arrows and apples are blooming the individual beautiful faces are smiling and moving even the pavement begins to flow into new concretions the eighth day is coming I have paid dearly in time for love I hoarded unseen summer goes into my words and comes out reason. Generation II A Black girl going into the woman her mother desired and prayed for walks alone and afraid of both their angers. Love, Maybe Always in the middle of our bloodiest battles you lay down your arms like flowering mines to conqueror me home. Conclusion Passing men in the street who are dead becomes a common occurrence but loving one of them is no solution. I believe in love as I believe in our children but I was born Black and without illusions and my vision which differs from yours is clear although sometimes restricted. I have watched you at midnight moving through casual sleep wishing I could afford the non-desperate dreams that stir you to wither and fade into partial solutions. Your nights are wintery long and very young full of symbols of purity and forgiveness and a meek jesus that rides through your cities on a barren ass whose braying does not include a future tense.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  Once in the market she was more comfortable than wealthy more black than white more proper than friendly more rushed than alone all her powers defined her like a carefully kneaded loaf rising and restrained working and making loving behind secret eyes. Once she was all the sums of her knowing counting on her to sustain them once she was more somebody else’s mother than mine now she weighs faces as once she weighed grapefruit. Waiting she does not count her change Her lonely eyes measure all who enter the market are they new are they old enough can they buy each other? To The Girl Who Lives In A Tree A letter in my mailbox says you’ve made it to Honduras and I wonder what is the colour of the wood you are chopping now. When you left this city I wept for a year down 14th Street across the Taconic Parkway through the shingled birdcotes along Riverside Drive and I was glad because in your going you left me a new country where Riverside Drive became an embattlement that even dynamite could not blast free where making both love and war became less inconsistent and as my tears watered morning I became my own place to fathom While part of me follows you still thru the woods of Oregon splitting dead wood with a rusty axe acting out the nightmares of your mothers creamy skin soot-covered from communal fires where you provide and labour to discipline your dreams whose symbols are immortalized in lies of history told like fairy tales called power behind the throne called noble frontier drudge and we both know you are not white with rage or fury but only from bleeding too much while trudging behind a wagon and confidentially did you really conquer Donner Pass with only a handcart? My mothers nightmares are not yours but just as binding. If in your sleep you tasted a child’s blood on your teeth while your chained black hand could not rise to wipe away his death upon your lips perhaps you would consider then why I choose this brick and shitty stone over the good earth’s challenge of green. Your mothers nightmares are not mine but just as binding.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  The arrangement with the Mayhews came to an unexpected and untimely end. Mayhew now and then had a tussle with another gambler and after I had been with him about three months, a gambler from Denver had a great contest with him and afterwards proposed that they should join forces and Mayhew should come to Denver. “More money to be made there in a week”, he declared, “than in Lawrence in a month.” Finally he persuaded Mayhew, who was wise enough to say nothing to his wife till the whole arrangement was fixed. She raved but could do nothing save give in, and so we had to part. Mayhew gave me one hundred dollars as a bonus, and Lorna one unforgettable, astonishing afternoon which I must now try to describe. I did not go near the Mayhews’ the day after his gift, leaving Lorna to suppose that I looked upon everything as ended. But the day after that I got a word from her, an imperious: “Come at once, I must see you!” Of course I went though reluctantly. As soon as I entered the room she rose from the sofa and came to me: “if I get you work in Denver, will you come out?” “How could I?” I asked in absolute astonishment, “you know I’m bound here to the University and then I want to go into a law-office as well: besides I could not leave Smith: I’ve never known such a teacher: I don’t believe his equal can be found anywhere.” She nodded her head: “I see”, she sighed, “I suppose it’s impossible; but I must see you”, she cried, “if I haven’t the hope, what do I say! the certainty of seeing you again, I shan’t go. I’d rather kill myself! I’ll be a servant and stay with you, my darling, and take care of you! I don’t care what I do so long as we are together: I’m nearly crazed with fear that I shall lose you.” “It’s all a question of money”, I said quietly, for the idea of her staying behind scared me stiff: “if I can earn money, I’d love to go to Denver in my holidays. It must be gorgeous there in summer six thousand odd feet above sea-level: I’d delight in it.” “If I send you the money, you’ll come?” she asked briefly. I made a face: “I can’t take money from—a love”, (I said “love” instead of “woman”: it was not so ugly) I went on, “but Smith says he can get me work and I have still a little: I’ll come in the holidays.” “Holy days they’ll be to me!” she said solemnly, and then with quick change of mood, “I’ll make a beautiful room for our love in Denver; but you must come for Christmas, I could not wait till midsummer: oh, how I shall ache for you—ache!”

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  To Welfare and insult from the slow shuffle from dayswork to shopping bags heavy with leftovers Rooming houses are old women waiting searching through their darkening windows the end or beginning of agony old women seen through half-ajar doors hoping they are not waiting but being an entrance to somewhere unknown and desired and not new. Bloodbirth That which is inside of me screaming beating about for exit or entry names the wind, wanting winds’ voice wanting winds’ power it is not my heart and I am trying to tell this without art or embellishment with bits of me flying out in all directions screams memories old pieces of flesh struck off like dry bark from a felled tree, bearing up or out holding or bring forth child or demon is this birth or exorcism or the beginning machinery of myself outlining recalling my father’s business—what I must be about—my own business minding. Shall I split or be cut down by a word’s complexion or the lack of it and from what direction will the opening be made to show the true face of me lying exposed and together my children your children their children bent on our conjugating business. Sowing It is the sink of the afternoon the children asleep or weary. I have finished planting the tomatoes in this brief sun after four days of rain now there is brown earth under my fingernails And sun full on my skin with my head thick as honey the tips of my fingers are stinging from the rich earth but more so from the lack of your body I have been to this place before where blood seething commanded my fingers fresh from the earth dream of plowing a furrow whose name should be you. Making it My body arcing across your white place we mingle color and substance wanting to mantle your cold I share my face with you but love becomes a lie as we suffer through split masks seeking the other half-self. We are hung up in giving what we wish to be given ourselves. On a night of the full moon I Out of my flesh that hungers and my mouth that knows comes the shape I am seeking for reason. The curve of your body fits my waiting hand your flesh warm as sunlight your lips quick as young birds between your thighs the sweet sharp taste of limes. Thus I hold you frank in my heart’s eye in my skin’s knowing as my fingers conceive your flesh I feel your stomach curving against me. Before the moon wanes again we shall come together. II And I would be the moon spoken over your beckoning flesh breaking against reservations beaching thought my hands at your high tide over and under inside you and the passing of hungers attended, forgotten.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  an exposed confessional that the confessor would have easily been recognized. But as often as one opportu- nity failed them, love furnished them with another. At that very time there came to the court a lady nearly related to the bastard. She and her son were lodged in the king's residence ; and the young prince had a pro- jecting chamber, detached as it were from the king's apartments, and so placed that from his window one could see and speak to Rolandine, their windows being exactly at the angle of the main building and the wing. The chamber which was over the king's hall was that of Rolandine and the other ladies of honour. Rolan- dine, having frequently seen the young prince at the window, sent word of the fact by her gouvernante to the bastard. The latter, having reconnoitred the ground, pretended to take great pleasure in reading the book of the Knights of the Round Table, which was one of those belonging to the prince ; and towards dinner-hour he used to beg a valet-de-chambre to let him in, and leave him shut up in the chamber to finish reading his book. The valet, knowing him to be his master's rela- tion, and a gentleman to be trusted, let him read as much as he pleased. Rolandine, on her part, used to come to her window, and in order to be free to remain there the longer, she pretended to have a sore leg ; and she took her meals so early that she had no need to go to the table of the ladies of honour. She also bethought her of working at a crimson silk coverlet, which she hung at the window, where she was very glad to be left alone to converse with her husband, who spoke in such a manner that no one could overhear them. When he saw anyone coming she coughed, and made signs to the bastard to retire. Those who had orders to watch them were persuaded that there was no love between them, 2 00 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE [Novel 2\ for she never quitted a chamber in which he certainly ceuld not see her, the entree being forbidden him.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  to wither and fade into partial solutions. Your nights are wintery long and very young full of symbols of purity and forgiveness and a meek jesus that rides through your cities on a barren ass whose braying does not include a future tense. But I wear my nights as I wear my life and my dying absolute and unforgiven nuggests of compromise and decision fossilized by fierce midsummer sun and when I dream I move through a Black land where the future glows eternal and green but where the symbols for now are bloody and unrelenting rooms where confused children with wooden stumps for fingers play at war who cannot pick up their marbles and run away home whenever nightmare threatens. Movement Song I have studied the tight curls on the back of your neck moving away from me beyond anger or failure your face in the evening schools of longing through mornings of wish and ripen we were always saying goodbye in the blood in the bone over coffee before dashing for elevators going in opposite directions without goodbyes. Do not remember me as a bridge nor a roof as the maker of legends nor as a trap door to that world where black and white clericals hang on the edge of beauty in five oclock elevators twitching their shoulders to avoid other flesh and now there is someone to speak for them moving away from me into tomorrows morning of wish and ripen your goodbye is a promise of lightning in the last angels hand unwelcome and warning the sands have run out against us we were rewarded by journeys away from each other into desire into mornings alone where excuse and endurance mingle conceiving decision. Do not remember me as disaster nor as the keeper of secrets I am a fellow rider in the cattle cars watching you move slowly out of my bed saying we cannot waste time only ourselves. Who Said It Was Simple There are so many roots to the tree of anger that sometimes the branches shatter before they bear. Sitting in Nedicks the women rally before they march discussing the problematic girls they hire to make them free. An almost white counterman passes a waiting brother to serve them first and the ladies neither notice nor reject the slighter pleasures of their slavery. But I who am bound by my mirror as well as my bed see causes in colour as well as sex and sit here wondering which me will survive all these liberations. from New York Head Shop and Museum (1974) TO THE CHOCOLATE PEOPLE OF AMERICA Chocolate people don’t melt in water they melt in your eyes. Jonathan Rollins—1971 New York City 1970 I How do you spell change like frayed slogan underwear with the emptied can of yesterdays’ meanings with yesterdays’ names? And what does the we-bird see with who has lost its I’s? There is nothing beautiful left in the streets of this city.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  By and by, when the year of mourning for his father was nearly expired, he resolved, when changing his gar- ments, to put himself on a good footing, and do honour to his ancestors. He spoke of his intention to his mother, who approved of it, and longed the more ardently to see him well married, as she had but two children, himself and a daugher, who was already set- tled in life. Like an honourable lady as she was, she encouraged her son to virtue by setting before him the example of a great number of young men of his own age, who were making way by themselves, or at least showed that they were worthy of the parents from whom they derived their being. As the only question now was where they should make their purchases, the good lady said to her son, " It is my opinion, Jacques, that we cannot do better than to go to Daddy Pierre's (this was the father of Frangoise). He is one of our friends, and would not cheat us." This was tickling her son where he itched ; however, 384 ^-^^^ HEPTAMERO^r OF THE {Nm-'d 44. he Stood out, and said, " We will go and deal where we are best served, and cheapest. However, as Daddy Pierre was the intimate friend of my late father, I shall be very glad to give him the first call before we go else- where." One morning, accordingly, the mother and son went to see the Sire Pierre, who received them very well, as you know that merchants can do when they scent profit. They had quantities uf silk unfolded for their inspec- tion, and chose what suited them ; but they could not agree upon the price, for Jacques haggled on purpose, because his mistress's mother did not make her appear- ance. At last they left the place without making any purchase, and went to look elsewhere ; but Jacques could see nothing he liked in any house but his mis- tress's, and they returned thither some time afterwards. Fran^oise's mother was there, and gave them the best possible reception. After the little ceremonies were gone through which are practised in such shops, the mercer's wife putting a higher price on her goods than her husband had done, " You are very hard, madam," said Jacques ; " but I see how it is. Father is dead, and our friends don't know us now." So saying he pre- tended to wipe his eyes, as if the thought of his father had drawn tears from them ; but this was only a device to help things forward. His mother, who took the mat- ter up in perfect good faith, said thereupon, in a dolor- ous tone, " Since the death of my poor good man, we are visited no more than if we had never been known. Little do people care for poor widows."

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  N. The Bride speaks of the shadow of the Spouse, and longs for it. Thus the faithful soul longs for Jesus, is inflamed with great love for Him, and is athirst for Him in the Spirit. Then she feels the shadow of her desire in the hope of finding fruit. Next she sits still, waits, and prays that He may pour Himself out altogether as the fruit which she seeks, for life and for refreshment. Lastly, when He is poured forth, she tastes His sweetness in rapture of soul. But you may say, ‘I prepare myself for Communion as often as I can; I receive the Body of my Lord; and yet I feel nothing of this consolation and spiritual sweetness of which you speak.’ To that I answer, This food or fruit is the medicine of man. Now a skilful physician gives to some persons medicine that is pleasant to the palate of the body, and to others that which is not sweet in this way, but pleasant to the palate of the mind. This may not be sweet to the throat, but it is sweet to the reason, because the reasonable patient knows that it is for his good. So our Lord gives His Body to the faithful. It is always sweet in itself; but to some He gives that sweetness in one way, and to some in another, just as He in His wisdom sees to be best for each soul. Hence there are two ways in which this sweetness of Jesus is felt: a. Some taste this sweetness in their affections, having great joy in their hearts. By very fervent devotion they find consolation and peace in God. St. Ambrose says, ‘O Bread most shiningly white, having in Thyself every delight and the sweetness of every taste, Thou who dost always refresh us, let my heart feed on Thee and taste Thy gladness.’ b. Others taste the same sweetness by an understanding turned to God. In this they have all the refreshment and all the help that they desire. They believe, and thus they know that by this holy Food they have true life, that is, the everlasting life which God gives. When the Bride says that the fruit of the Divine Spouse is sweet to her taste, she means that it is sweet to the loving and faithful mind, which believes in God, and thus knows the exceedingly great profitableness of this holy Food. This fruit is sweet to the taste of the heart when it finds in it the principle of life, and perceives it even in a bodily way. If, then, you should not feel inward delight after the first way, by love and devotion and sensible sweetness, you can feel it in the second way, by understanding all the good the Body of Jesus does to your soul.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  121WHEN I first met Tamara—to give her a name concolorous with her real one—she was fifteen, and I was a year older. The place was the rugged but comely country (black fir, white birch, peatbogs, hayfields, and barrens) just south of St. Petersburg. A distant war was dragging on. Two years later, that trite deus ex machina, the Russian Revolution, came, causing my removal from the unforgettable scenery. In fact, already then, in July 1915, dim omens and backstage rumblings, the hot breath of fabulous upheavals, were affecting the so-called “Symbolist” school of Russian poetry—especially the verse of Alexander Blok. During the beginning of that summer and all through the previous one, Tamara’s name had kept cropping up (with the feigned naïveté so typical of Fate, when meaning business) here and there on our estate (Entry Forbidden) and on my uncle’s land (Entry Strictly Forbidden) on the opposite bank of the Oredezh. I would find it written with a stick on the reddish sand of a park avenue, or penciled on a whitewashed wicket, or freshly carved (but not completed) in the wood of some ancient bench, as if Mother Nature were giving me mysterious advance notices of Tamara’s existence. That hushed July afternoon, when I discovered her standing quite still (only her eyes were moving) in a birch grove, she seemed to have been spontaneously generated there, among those watchful trees, with the silent completeness of a mythological manifestation. She slapped dead the horsefly that she had been waiting for to light and proceeded to catch up with two other, less pretty girls who were calling to her. Presently, from a vantage point above the river, I saw them walking over the bridge, clicking along on brisk high heels, all three with their hands tucked into the pockets of their navy-blue jackets and, because of the flies, every now and then tossing their beribboned and beflowered heads. Very soon I traced Tamara to the modest dachka (summer cottage) that her family rented in the village. I would ride my horse or my bicycle in the vicinity, and with the sudden sensation of a dazzling explosion (after which my heart would take quite a time to get back from where it had landed) I used to come across Tamara at this or that bland bend of the road. Mother Nature eliminated first one of her girl companions, then the other, but not until August—August 9, 1915, to be Petrarchally exact, at half-past four of that season’s fairest afternoon in the rainbow-windowed pavilion that I had noticed my trespasser enter—not until then, did I muster sufficient courage to speak to her.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  " I am sure," said Parlamente, " that love would never have so deprived you of your wits but that you would have taken care to tie up your arm better. Men no longer lose their lives for ladies. That time is gone by." " But the time is not gone by," retorted Simontault, " when ladies forget their lovers' lives for sake of their own pleasure." " I do not believe," said Ennasuite, " that there is a woman in the world who would take delight in any man's death, though he were her enemy ; but if men choose to kill themselves, the ladies cannot hinder them." " She, however, who refused bread to the poor famish- ing man," said Saffredent, "must be regaredd as his murderess." " If your prayers were as reasonable as those of the beggar who asks for bread," said Oisille, " it would be too cruel on the part of the ladies to deny your petition. But, thank Heaven, this malady kills none but those whose time is come." " I cannot think, madam," replied Saffredent, " that there is any greater need than that one which makes a ^2 4 THE HEFTAMERON OF THE \Nmel ^o, man forget all others. When one loves well, one knows no other bread than the glances and the words of the beloved being." " If you were starved for a while you would tell a very different story," said Oisille. " I confess," he replied, " that the body might grow weak under that discipline, but not the heart and the will " " That being the case," said Parlamente, " God has been very gracious to you in making you fall into the hands of women who have given you so little satisfac- tion that you must console yourself for it by eating and drinking. You take so kindly to that sort of consolation that methinks you ought to thank God for that merciful cruelty." " I am so inured to suffering," he replied, " that I be- gin to take pleasure in the ills which others bemoan." " It may be," said Longarine, " that your lamentations exclude you from the company to which you would other- wise be welcome, for there is nothing so disagreeable as an importunate lover." " Or as a cruel lady, you may add," said Simontault. " If we were to wait till Simontault had delivered all his maxims," said Oisille, " I see that we should come in for complines instead of vespers. Let us, then, go and thank God that this day has passed without any dispute of more consequence."

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  Retrospectively, the summer of 1905, though quite vivid in many ways, is not animated yet by a single bit of quick flutter or colored fluff around or across the walks with the village schoolmaster: the Swallowtail of June, 1906, was still in the larval stage on a roadside umbellifer; but in the course of that month I became acquainted with a score or so of common things, and Mademoiselle was already referring to a certain forest road that culminated in a marshy meadow full of Small Pearl-bordered Fritillaries (thus called in my first unforgettable and unfadingly magical little manual, Richard South’s The Butterflies of the British Isles which had just come out at the time) as le chemin des papillons bruns. The following year I became aware that many of our butterflies and moths did not occur in England or Central Europe, and more complete atlases helped me to determine them. A severe illness (pneumonia, with fever up to 41° centigrade), in the beginning of 1907, mysteriously abolished the rather monstrous gift of numbers that had made of me a child prodigy during a few months (today I cannot multiply 13 by 17 without pencil and paper; I can add them up, though, in a trice, the teeth of the three fitting in neatly); but the butterflies survived. My mother accumulated a library and a museum around my bed, and the longing to describe a new species completely replaced that of discovering a new prime number. A trip to Biarritz, in August 1907, added new wonders (though not as lucid and numerous as they were to be in 1909). By 1908, I had gained absolute control over the European lepidoptera as known to Hofmann. By 1910, I had dreamed my way through the first volumes of Seitz’s prodigious picture book Die Gross-Schmetterlinge der Erde, had purchased a number of rarities recently described, and was voraciously reading entomological periodicals, especially English and Russian ones. Great upheavals were taking place in the development of systematics. Since the middle of the century, Continental lepidopterology had been, on the whole, a simple and stable affair, smoothly run by the Germans. Its high priest, Dr. Staudinger, was also the head of the largest firm of insect dealers. Even now, half a century after his death, German lepidopterists have not quite managed to shake off the hypnotic spell occasioned by his authority. He was still alive when his school began to lose ground as a scientific force in the world. While he and his followers stuck to specific and generic names sanctioned by long usage and were content to classify butterflies by characters visible to the naked eye, English-speaking authors were introducing nomenclatorial changes as a result of a strict application of the law of priority and taxonomic changes based on the microscopic study of organs. The Germans did their best to ignore the new trends and continued to cherish the philatelylike side of entomology. Their solicitude for the “average collector who should not be made to dissect” is comparable to the way nervous publishers of popular novels pamper the “average reader”—who should not be made to think.