AFTERLOVE Now that you havelost the way you''d taken, walk out through thenew moon in the spruces and lie down in thedeep leaves of the clearing. Listen: they arestill here, the wild things, migrations moving onagain from winter. All your life you heard a word of the singing, all your life admitted just a bitof it; all your life you played your one small part. Wake now. Stay here with your parting arms and do it, finally do it: open to the whole of it,the whole of it, the wind that sings what''s been sincethe beginning. Listen. Listen.Listen.

There is no one you''re betraying in your changes when you become the whole wild song of what you are. SHADOWPUPPETS for my son All my life I sought a little comfort, a little home from which I once was banished. Now I lie beside youin the moonlight and laugh with you at the shadows onthe ceiling: these mythic things,these wings, these bears, their dance. All my life my lifewas trying to make you-- you who show me this is what a life is, this living it, this making darkness beautiful, this knowing that our world is in our hands. WORDSFOUND IN THE RUBBLE AFTER THE LAST WAR Yes, we lived in atime of darkness and did nothing. Yes, we looked upand we saw the sky on fire, and we knew that wehad made the flames with our own hands. Yes, we wasted everybreath on rage. Children, if any ofyou have survived this, start again with the simplestthings, we beg you.

Walk out through thegarden of the darkness and touch eachother''s faces in the morning air. Slowly. Slowly. Say each other''s names.