MY GRANDMOTHER'S LOVE LETTERS by Hart Crane
There are no stars tonight
But those of memory.
Yet how much room for memory there is
In the loose girdle of soft rain.
There is even room enough
For the letters of my mother's mother,
Elizabeth,
That have been pressed so long
Into a corner of the roof
That they are brown and soft,
And liable to melt as snow.
Over the greatness of such space
Steps must be gentle.
It is all hung by an invisible white hair.
It trembles as birch limbs webbing the air.
And I ask myself:
"Are your fingers long enough to play
Old keys that are but echoes:
Is the silence strong enough
To carry back the music to its source
And back to you again
As though to her?"
Yet I would lead my grandmother by the hand
Through much of what she would not understand;
And so I stumble. And the rain continues on the roof
With such a sound of gently pitying laughter.
....and the piece de resistance
the illustrated love letters of Henry Moore to his mistress
"I also delight in the way a shy restrained
letter can reveal the writer's feelings thanks
to one word he or she couldn't hold back,
flying off like a reckless butterfly, landing --
it knows the exact spot -- in the corner of
the reader's mouth, as a quivering smile,
trembling at the premonition of a secret
love that has in fact been avowed."
-- Agnes Desarthe, from Chez Moi
In this short life
that only lasts an hour
merely
How much -- How
little -- is
within our
power.
- Emily Dickinson
