Jack Gilbert - Refusing Heaven (2005)

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We are all burning in time, but each is consumed
at his own speed.

Jack Gilbert

THE ABANDONED VALLEY Can you understand being alone so long you would go out in the middle of the night and put a bucket into the well so you could feel something down there tug at the other end of the rope?

Jack Gilbert

But anything worth doing is worth doing badly. Like being there by that summer ocean on the other side of the island while love was fading out of her, the stars burning so extravagantly those nights that anyone could tell you they would never last.

Jack Gilbert

We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stuborness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world.

Jack Gilbert

I ask myself what is the sound of women? What is the word for that still thing I have hunted inside them for so long? Deep inside the avalanche of joy, the thing deeper in the dark, and deeper still in the bed where we are lost. Deeper, deeper down where a woman's heart is holding its breath, where something very far away in that body is becoming something we don't have a name for.

Jack Gilbert

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.

Jack Gilbert