The Great Fires

 

Love is apart from all things.
Desire and excitement are nothing beside it.

 

Magazine Beach after Boston University Bridge before Memorial Dr.

It is not the body that finds love.
What leads us there is the body.

What is not love provokes it.
What is not love quenches it.
Love lays hold of everything we know.

 

 

Boston University Bridge

The passions which are called love
also change everything to a newness
at first. Passion is clearly the path
but does not bring us to love.

 

 

 North End, Little Italy

It opens the castle of our spirit
so that we might find the love which is
a mystery hidden there.

 

 

 

North End

Love is one of many great fires.
Passion is a fire made of many woods,
each of which gives off its special odor
so we can know the many kinds
that are not love.

 

 

 

 Boston University Bridge

Passion is the paper
and twigs that kindle the flames
but cannot sustain them. Desire perishes
because it tries to be love.

 

 

 

Copley Square
 

Love is eaten away by appetite.
Love does not last, but it is different
from the passions that do not last.

 

 

 

Magazine Beach after Boston University Bridge before Memorial Dr

Love lasts by not lasting.
Isaiah said each man walks in his own fire
for his sins.

Love allows us to walk
in the sweet music of our particular heart.