heavenly questions

How could I say we wanted nothing else

And nothing less and nothing more than this,

To find each other's spirit's melting point

And changing states, never such nakedness

Between such two, my bluest veins to kiss,

Never such certainty, the selfsame quest

Not to possess, but to be known; to know;

Not needing it confirmed, confirming it.
And in a place arrived at on our knees,

He tugged my face to his, as if he took

His own life in his hands; all gentle ways;

A lifelong quest for you; and won't let go

Unless you leave your fingerprints on me;

A gaze returned, the softest counterblow;

And gathering my hair in gentle fists,

Persuasion's force with no one to persuade,

Only persuading hairpins from my hair,

Their falling on the floor, a plunder-gift;

And nothing lost, but found and found again;

And not conquest, but everything in play

Given, not taken; taken anyway,

And not to keep in any case; but kept;

Possessed, but not in order to possess;

Selfsame, self-owned, self-given, self-possessed,

And all in play. But conquered nonetheless.

-- Gjertrude Schnackenberg, Heavenly Questions

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What reconciles me to my own death more than anything else is the image of a place: a place where your bones and mine are buried, thrown, uncovered, together. They are strewn there pell-mell. One of your ribs leans against my skull. A metacarpal of my left hand lies inside your pelvis. (Against my broken ribs your breast like a flower.) The hundred bones of our feet are scattered like gavel. It is strange that this image of our proximity, concerning as it does mere phosphate of calcium, should bestow a sense of peace. Yet it does. With you I can imagine a place where to be phosphate of calcium is enough.

-- John Berger, And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos