I've quoted quite a bit this cold January from "Letters to Elena", retracing that 5-yr-old snow-trail. Soon we may continue into the delta mysteries of ch. 3, "Palm Sunday". yup. & we haven't even talked about July yet. ("The pants were big in the waist and the shirt ballooned out, for my brother Julius had a fat chest. I wiped my sweat with a handkerchief stitched with a J." - Saul Bellow, Humboldt's Gift)

from "Letters", the conclusion:

 
                          *

  
         It is finished.  The dove will not return
 to the empty sanctuary.  My blue pines,
 my frozen childhood firs... a saw whines,
 a wolf howls, Elena, in that forsaken

  
         garden.  I whisper to myself alone,
 I say.  Just then – the darkness wanes.
 Gratitude swells... through windowpanes,
 the shadow of a hand grows light toward dawn.


 
                                   Providence
                           2.5.99