The door of the novel, like the door of the poem, also shuts. But not so fast, nor with such manic, unanswerable finality.

The silence drew off, baring the pebbles and shells and all the tatty wreckage of my life.

And I identify too closely with my reading, with my writing.

I opened the door and blinked out into the bright hall. I had the impression it wasn't night and it wasn't day, but some lurid third interval that had suddenly slipped between them and would never end.

Bright beads of red are rising through the ink, Hearts-blood bubbles smearing out into the black stream

I am sending back the key that let me into bluebeard's study; because he would make love to me I am sending back the key; in his eye's darkroom I can see my X-rayed heart, dissected body: I am sending back the key that let me into bluebeard s study.

The body is amazingly stubborn when it comes to sacrificing itself to the annihilating directions of the mind.