the hanged man
The odd new genre of Shakespeare porn. "By adding Shakespeare to anything," says Nina Hartley, star of A Midsummer Night's Cream, "you automatically class it up. Certainly it helps to get you onto cable."
St. Clare of Assisi is the patron saint of television, by virtue of a mystical television-like experience in the thirteenth century.
But that's the covenant. "I give you leave
to break my heart tomorrow, but for now
you are my own." I took the pledge. I bow
before these terms. I no longer believe
the end negates all meaning. I had reprieve
from loneliness for twenty months, and how
can that be bitter? In the end, I know
it was a sacred thing. And if I grieve
for loss, it's like the grief for summer's end.
In cycles wider than the brain can feel,
in snow-clogged caverns, life awaits rebirth.
I trust in this. I'm learning to depend
on hidden things beneath the frozen earth.
So learn to hold and wait. Learn to be still.
