Louise Glück

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Even before you touched me, I belonged to you; all you had to do was look at me

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Living things don't all requirelight in the same degree. Some of usmake our own light: a silver leaflike a path no one can use, a shallowlake of silver in the darkness under the great maples.But you know this already.You and the others who thinkyou live for truth and, by extension, loveall that is cold

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We look at the world once, in childhood.The rest is memory

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You know, he said, our work is difficult: we confrontmuch sorrow and disappointment.He gazed at me with increasing frankness.I was like you once, he added, in love with turbulence

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(after many years) we were still at that first stage, stillpreparing to begin a journey, but we were changed nevertheless;we could see this in one another; we had changed althoughwe never moved, and one said, ah, behold how we have aged, travelingfrom day to night only, neither forward nor sideward, and this seemedin a strange way miraculous. And those who believed we should have a purposebelieved this was the purpose, and those who felt we must remain freein order to encounter truth felt it had been revealed