Possession

“What is it? My Dear?”

“Ah, how can we bear it?”

“Bear what?”

“This. For so short a time. How can we sleep this time away?”

“We can be quiet together and pretend—since it is only the beginning—that we have all the time in the world.”

“And everyday we shall have less. And then none.”

“Would you rather, therefore, have had nothing at all?”

“No. This is where I have always been coming to. Since my time began. And when I go away from here, this will be the mid-point, to which everything ran, before, and from which everything will run. But now, my love, we are here, we are now, and those other times are running elsewhere.”


A.S. Byatt

Cloths of Heaven for an Angel

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread carefully because you tread on my dreams.

W. B. Yeats