IN HER FATHER’S HOUSE TIME WAS A SONATA
AND EVERYTHING WAS FORETOLD

What she wanted was to sit in the profound silence of the world, which was greater than the both of
them, and greater moreover than that, to sit with him as she sat in her father’s house

What she wanted was to let the evening insinuate itself into their lives gradually, and then dance itself
out of existence, with its soft radiance, the radiance of a rose, to accept the gestures of time

The way she had been taught, to move easily among the pleasures of her father’s house, shadows
were enough, in her father’s house time was a sonata and everything was foretold

The accumulation of days might have added gracefully to their lives too, if only he would let them, oh
this man, she wanted to remember each of their days as distinct, each flowing into each other

She wanted to hold his hand and circle him, like a child on her first carousel, in her imagination life was
musical, sharing it was a promenade, she wanted them to fall together into the apogee

To wrap themselves into each other like darkness or the return of day, to suffer with him, to live and die
and accept things as they are, until it was all over

But he was not like that, he was like the other men

Remarkable in all the usual ways, always in a hurry even when he was sitting still, what is this fever
which possesses them? She would never understand men, so clumsy around her

He was a steampipe fitter, off tune as a calliope, big bold and inefficient, his hand in her hands was
eager and bright and dumbfounded, useful as a dog or a horse but uncomprehending

He was cautious with his phrases and fearful of the personal, he avoided the invisible realities in which
her imagination thrived, the higher sensibilities, like a priest avoids the plague

You could fit what he knew about women into a clamshell and watch it float out to sea

If a clamshell could float, but they don’t