Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies are not starving someplace, they are starving somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils. But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants. Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women at the fountain are laughing together between the suffering they have known and the awfulness in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody in the village is very sick. There is laughter every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta, and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay. If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction, we lessen the importance of their deprivation. 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. If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down, we should give thanks that the end had magnitude. We must admit there will be music despite everything. We stand at the prow again of a small ship anchored late at night in the tiny port looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning. To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth all the years of sorrow that are to come.

from REFUSING HEAVEN (Knopf 2005)

“And,” she said, “you must talk no more about ecstasy. It is loneliness.” The woman wandered about picking up her shoes and silks. “You said you loved me,” the man said. “We tell lies,” she said, brushing her wonderful hair, naked except for the jewelry. “We try to believe.” “you were helpless with joy,” he said, “moaning and weeping.” “In the dream,” she said, “we pretend to ourselves that we are touching. The heart lies to itself because it must.”

I do not know where either of us can turn Just at first, waking from the sleep of each other. I do not know how we can bear The river struck by the gold plummet of the moon, Or many trees shaken together in the darkness. We shall wish not to be alone And that love were not dispersed and set free— Though you defeat me, And I be heavy upon you.

But like earth heaped over the heart Is love grown perfect. Like a shell over the beat of life Is love perfect to the last. So let it be the same Whether we turn to the dark or to the kiss of another; Let us know this for leavetaking, That I may not be heavy upon you, That you may blind me no more.

Note: Leaving India this evening to return to New York, with 10 pounds of books newly purchased, clothes, sweets, and a heart that couldn't produce an aubade this morning.