THE ABANDONED VALLEY Can you understand being alone so long you would go out in the middle of the night and put a bucket into the well so you could feel something down there tug at the other end of the rope?

What we feel most has no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses and birds.

I had lived all of my youthful dreams, but I couldn't think of many adult ones. I finally realized that we don't have many dreams for adults because, historically, people have always died much younger than they do today.

I dream of lost vocabularies that might express some of what we no longer can.

You will love again, people say. Give it time. Me with time running out. Day after day of the everyday. What they call real life, made of eighth-inch gauge. Newness strutting around as if it were significant. Irony, neatness and rhyme pretending to be poetry. I want to go back to that time after Michiko's death when I cried every day among the trees. To the real. To the magnitude of pain, of being that much alive.

I'm vain enough to think that I've made a successful life. I've had everything I've ever wanted. You can't beat that.

We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.