Perhaps the heart is constant after all. Perhaps it
makes no difference who we love, what voice lures
us, what name we call. It’s always the same love is
it not? Drawn from the one spring, coursing the same
Track. It’s always the same thirst we slake, the
same image in the pool; the same blood dimmed gaze.
Perhaps it makes no difference who we lust for –
isn’t it always the same veil we cast over each new
Form; the finest gossamer illusion can buy, spun
from the sheerest silks of faith, hope and deceit?
What can it signify at the end of it whose gaze
ensnares? Isn’t it always the same sirenian song,
The same wine on the tongue, the same salt in the
wound? If the heart is faithful in the least, is it to
the elemental, the universal theme? Is it only in
particulars that love betrays – the setting and the
Costumes: a certain sky, a certain street, oleander
at an open gate, a spiral stairs, a white coverlet –
the weather and the houses, the language and the
streets: surface things, easily exchanged, forgotten
Shed like leaves or skin, like memory itself. Like
the imprint of sight and touch: breath on glass, a
particular face. Perhaps, this too at last will wane,
and with it the afterglow: a certain night, a scented
road, the scarred river, the lamp-lit bridge: a lover
crossing over; crossing back – a stranger. Even this,
too at last will fade, erased like time itself. Like the
memory of her face. Like the memory of that lie.
