The Forms By Peter Marin Let each image weep, as the Forms do, lost to thought. For love is also a way, as the heart is, or birds as they sip from the body all that is gone from the world. Yes, love is a way folded in the flesh, in the gazes of lovers, in the great lake of tears cupped by the mountains in landscapes empty of men. There is this, also: the organs afloat on the air like leaves in a breeze. What has been shattered cannot be recalled. The Forms, where they wait, distanced and faint, are broken, bereaved. This too is a grace, the ground of our Being. Where words cease, where images fade, there we can live: as if Venus will not rise, as if the world was still unformed, as if wisdom is only a field -- green, filled with flowers -- where lovers can lie down. If humming-birds sip, as they do, from our bodies, can we not, in the end, become flowers? Let us make of the flesh a garden where, though broken, the Forms shine in the light of the Good. Let spirit brighten the world like a sun. And, yes, we can be saved by love -- the wise learn this, one by one. —TOP OF PAGE—