The kiss. For all the world it could have been the still center or free-fall all a-tremble together; as leaves a-flutter in the breeze strike the flint in the traces, to sweeten the fresh images illuminated, and those beautiful carvings a filagree of light and air. Long and amazing kiss, all the time in the world. And that boy there in the tender embrace of his golden match made in heaven wreathed with flowers in the dappled Sun, hard by the old mill turning over and over in a sweet dissonance to lull — but that boy there, was it me, could it have been me? Hands sculpted in light a parting of two dreams; as to the whelming over-topping a Nimbus marauding with feet of a million caresses the countryside at the hour of Love’s young thought. Hands, whether in motion, or at rest, at rest such as hers up above her head, palm up, in the grass. And follow to sheen and shoulder to return frame to the kiss. And soft. Soft. Or in motion having broken off to receive a kiss, a nip and a kiss again, to her throat; how she turned her face away and pulled her thick blonde hair across and over her eyes. And all her world was rosy through a golden sheen.

The two bicycles lay side by side in the nettles where they coasted in and dismounted together while still in motion and let them fall. But as the sap rose in the heat of afternoon, the ache of longing had her pull the blindfold secure over her eyes — O love me, she breathed. And then release and fall and he was three headed, en-tubed, in the blur and afterimage — in her eyes. And pushing in he fixed his eyes upon her. She, she gazed at a passing cloud and she slowly turned her head from side to side. Bicycles, his red and faded tossed or let fall as was his habit bright and free; afterwards pick them up, him on red one, her on blue, and push off to glide, any length, red faded and blue dusted with yellow pollen — see above, a lifetime above, the dream-notebook with the snake coiled and twisted writhing in some kind of ecstasy as drawn; how it lies dreaming in the green hills under red skies of night. Halt, push on; then halt again. Ghostly in the gathering dark they gathered flowers along the shoulder of the inland road dusted white — push off with her basket full of mountain flowers. Sky bright; land falling into earthly umber and deeper still to clap and after-image, even as it echoed away. Whether rising or falling, one after the other; and then all at once the mountain opposite opened, it opened a view to the sea — beautiful gap through which the distant, thundering waves crashing on the beach below rose up to bring to their hearing a mountainous music; and they stopped and sat together upon the very verge, under the westering sky — and they said nothing, and out of the furl of silence between them a lateral drift, time out of mind, and “the sea lay level deep and lambent.” And he is the last person, he . . . she and he nested back to front, one sunk in the other; how the image of warm embrace, warm and enfolding, freely ranges in to the branchings setting out from that wondrous chrysalis to climb the rustic ladder to the oriel window — the memento mori, black with fresh extinguishings, at our feet. O don’t you remember? . . . shapely thing, pulled this way and that, at rest among the dandelion, among the stars a-swarm in cesspools; among the sea-farer’s compass which lies crushed in the mud, its needle at sundown. Holiday evening lounge music floated smiles out in front of the ruby ended waves — bright faces with funny little clown noses found our place together in the crushed velvets, petal by petal to the heart of mystery. But leave that, leave all that!