To sit on a hotel balcony in Jerusalem and to write:"Sweetly pass the days from desert to sea." And to write:"Tears dry quickly here. This blot is a tear that made the ink run." That's how they used to write in the last century. "I have drawn a little circle around it."

Time passes, as when someone's on the phone laughing or crying far away from me: whatever I hear, I can't see; what I see, I don't hear.

We weren't careful when we said "Next year" or "A month ago." Those words are like broken glass: you can hurt yourself with them, even slash an artery, if that's what you're like.

But you were beautiful as the commentary on ancient text. The surplus of women in your distant country brought you to me,but another law of probability has taken you away again.

To live is to build a ship and harbor at the same time. And to finish the harbor long after the ship has gone down.

And to conclude: I remember only that it was foggy. And if that's the way you remember- what do you remember?

How often have I carried our family word For the hot water bottle To a strange bed As my father would juggle a red-hot half-brick In an old sock To his childhood settle. I have taken it into so many lovely heads or laid it between us like a sword.

An hotel room in New York City with a girl who spoke hardly any English my hand on her breast like the smouldering one-off spoor of the yeti or some other shy beast that has yet to enter the language.