What has this to do with love? Ah! And what has not?
Why not tell the tale of, as well as to, the heart of stone?
Strike iron or steel across the flint and have you not
the spark, the flame, the smoky fume which all have known
if there is any tinder drying in the tender heart – and if not
will not red blood flow where yellow flame has grown?

What first hurts us produces whitening scars, and for man’s forming
we first grow and then crack open our thick shells, for transforming.

In the wild, creatures devour what they desire, to fill the emptiness
in stomachs that demand a frequent blood or cellulose communion –
we just turn from one thing to another in our well-developed restlessness,
since in mankind all creatures, extinct or not, find their reunion
as human impulses initially instinctual, as long as our old carelessness
precludes eventual thoughtfulness and a desire for a mystic Union.

All hunger tastes the same, despite the connoisseurs’ neat delineations,
just as all things and all endeavors seem to love’s sweet preoccupations.

Was it something in her gaze or in her eyes,
a bright radiance, or her self-contemplation,
a haunted or a hungry look behind a smile that lies,
arch lines, the symmetry, or an undulation –
scented hair, presence, absence, this interest comprise,
or did something undefined produce this agitation?

When we least expect it, something stirs within,
creating in the heart much fire and smoke therein.