It is a far cry from silkworms.

The violence of anger became

the violence of love. If every

tiny flower wanted to be a rose,

spring would lose its

digressions. When she is overcome

by love for her father,

she wishes he were dead too.

 

This difference didn’t

stop us loving each other

more and more. When one’s

in love one says a thousand

silly temporal things.

 

At three o’clock in the morning

of November 4, the frigid

doctor of distances will get

into your bed and bring

a work of art to life. A flight

is a sort of delirium. A sort

of Archimedean geometry

about sex, or youth.

 

It is all a matter of blood.

 

 

 

*All the text in this poem is taken from either Saint Thérèse de Lisieux’s The Story of a Soul (translated by John Beevers) or Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet’s Dialogues (translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam).

…

Tom Snarsky teaches mathematics at Malden High School in Malden, Massachusetts, USA.