And so it was I entered the broken world To trace the visionary company of love, its voice An instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled) But not for long to hold each desperate choice.

The form of my poem rises out of a past that so overwhelms the present with its worth and vision that I'm at a loss to explain my delusion that there exist any real links between that past and a future worthy of it.

The fact that The Bridge contains folk lore and other material suitable to the epic form need not therefore prove its failure as a long lyric poem, with interrelated sections.

And so it was I entered the broken world To trace the visionary company of love, its voice An instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled) But not for long to hold each desperate choice.

Let my lusts be my ruin, then, since all else is a fake and a mockery.

And so she comes to dream herself the tree, The wind possessing her, weaving her young veins, Holding her to the sky and its quick blue, Drowning the fever of her hands in sunlight. She has no memory, nor fear, nor hope Beyond the grass and shadows at her feet.

Permit me voyage, love, into your hands.