"All her life, she had sought to make herself invulnerable, unassailable, beyond reach of the world's judgment.

And yet her soul was tortured, exposed. Even walking up the path to the church, confident as she was that in every respect she stood beyond all vulgar judgment, knowing perfectly that her appearance was complete and perfect, according to the first standards, yet she suffered a torture, under her confidence and her pride, feeling herself exposed to wounds and to mockery and to despite. She always felt vulnerable, vulnerable, there was always a secret chink in her armour. She did not know herself what it was. It was a lack of robust self, she had no natural sufficiency, there was a terrible void, a lack, a deficiency of being within her.

And she wanted someone to close up this deficiency, to close it up for ever. She craved for -. When he was there, she felt complete, she was sufficient, whole. For the rest of time she was established on the sand, built over a chasm, and, in spite of all her vanity and securities, any common maid-servant of positive, robust temper could fling her down this bottomless pit of insufficiency, by the slightest movement of jeering or contempt."

Women in Love, D. H. Lawrence 

elan, elan

"A voluptuous vibration constantly stirs Chloe, the most chaste of cities. If men and women began to live their ephemeral dreams, every phantom would become a person with whom to begin a story of pursuits, pretenses, misunderstandings, clashes, oppressions, and the carousel of fantasies would stop."

Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino 

Plangent

O come, in any way you want,

In morning sunlight fooling in the leaves

Or in thick bouts of rain that soak my head

         Because of what the darkness said

Or come, though far too slowly for my eye to see,

Like a dark hair that fades to gray

Come with the wind that wraps my house 

Or winter light that slants upon a page

         Because the beast is stirring in its cage

Or come in raw and ragged smells

Of gumleaves dangling down at noon

Or in the undertow of love

When she's away

         Because a night creeps through the day

Come as you used to, years ago,

When I first fell for you

In the deep calm of an autumn morning

Beginning with the cooing of a dove

         Because of love, the lightest love

Or if that's not your way these days

Because of me, because

Of something dead in me,

Come like a jagged knife into my gut

         Because your touch will surely cut

Come any way you want 

But come

- Kevin Hart, Flame Tree: Selected Poems