O Babylon! Your God is a sport-utility vehicle, a VCR, and a two-car garage!
You delight in images of killing and artificially-large-breasted women!
Your arteries are clogged with Big Macs and a thousand pieces of Kentucky-Fried Chicken!
Your God is Technology.  Your God is Progress.

Your skyscrapers rise to the heavens!  Your astronauts fly to the moon!
You clone sheep! alter genes! make a mountain into a parking lot!
Your fields flower!  Your grain-bins groan under the weight of the ripe corn!
But the land of your soul is a desolation.

O God of Henry Ford, the Wright Brothers, and Bill Gates,...
All the nations adore Thee!
(Pretty soon they'll be ordering Papa John pizza by cell phone in New Guinea....)
Your God is Mammon.

After the movies, after the Quarter-pounders-with-cheese, super-size fries, and a large Coke,
after the evening news, the Hostess cupcakes, golf, beers, and swimming 20 laps,
the hunger will be the same as the day you first felt it, O Babylon!
the thirst of the soul, O Babylon!

God waited for Abraham's arm to be actually starting down, the biceps fully tensed.

Nothing short would do; in extremity, we learn what's true.

With a good job, a good marriage, a fine son, I had everything one could expect.  
And yet there was a lingering dissatisfaction; a malaise.
It seemed, deep down, that I didn't really feel or believe in anything.

.........                                             ­                                 
On Saturday morning, August 11, 1990, my three-year-old son and I rounded the corner at the south end of the block where we live.  We were out for a walk.  (He had been born through in-vitro fertilization, everything else had failed -- including several previous in-vitro attempts.)  He was riding his tricycle -- it's amazing how fast a three-year-old can go on a tricycle with big wheels. . . .  The house next to the corner had tall bushes growing right out to the sidewalk.  As we passed the house, my son speeded up.  My attention was diverted to men working across the street trimming trees.  Their chainsaws drowned out the sound of a car backing out of the driveway next to the house with the bushes.  The car was moving slowly and I can see in the slowest of slow motion -- I screamed, but I'm not sure just when (there's no sound track to this movie) -- the car backing into the left handlebar of the tricycle, tilting it over to the right, my son breaking his fall with his right hand.   (As low to the ground as he and the tricycle were, they could not be visible in the driver's rearview mirror at this point.)  And, then, the car stopping.  Did the car stop because of my scream?  Or had the old man driving the car seen my son at the last second before he disappeared behind the car?
.......

I learned instantly with the terrible weight of that tire inches from my son's head, that I wanted with a giant, horrible wanting for this boy to grow up healthy and to have children of his own who would, in turn, have children of their own, and that having my wife hate me for losing him would be unbearable.

All the unfairnesses I had suffered in life -- ALL of them --
instantly became meaningless. Everything was clear.
This is what I wanted; this is what I believed.

That magic summer where we first met and wooed
fades further from us with each passing year.
The words we spoke are gone; the words' tune lingers on.

We'd tasted love--
sweet, imbalanced, temporary--
now longed for the same only more complete,
more complementary.

Intimacy comes easily to some.
Others store their feelings up:
treasure for those who can rightly claim it.

We met at a party for new students,
drinking strawberry daiquiris.
For me, the attraction was immediate;
a bit slower for you, you say.

We were wary; our trust grew quickly.
And we, in the confines of this serious trust,
at last could be
our own childish, playful selves.

We went to movies, plays, folk-dancing;
walked in Crystal Lake Park;
ate; watched your soap opera;
touched each other constantly;
fought; made up elegantly.

And then, as we sat on a warm stone bench
on top of that underground library,
eating lunch,
--heart in throat--I said:

"The pleasure I have known in being with you
for these six weeks is something quite unusual.
And if the same is true for you,
if this's a love which could lead to marriage,
then I will try to find a job nearby,
where I can see you frequently.
But if your love is of a lesser sort, then I
will cast my net this great world o'er
and go where Fortune takes me."

                                   Then you,
not hesitating a single moment,
flooding my eyes with your radiant smile,
replied, "It could! Oh yes, indeed, it could!"

Much has happened since,
but I say it was then, that summer, that moment,
love reached the final, high plane
where we, though hardly conscious of it now, still dwell.

It promised to be quite ordinary,
that old student/new student/faculty social hour.

I had come to Champaign with high hopes a year earlier,
starting a new career (--and hoping to find someone to love).
Now, with just three months left,
my studies had been a success,
but I had not found anyone to love.
And now I was thinking beyond Champaign:
where I would go, what I would do with my new degree.

I scanned the faces in the crowd.
Mixed in with all-too-familiar classmates and teachers were new people:
A formidable, blonde-haired woman
with a big voice and a large imitation pearl necklace;
no meek, retiring librarian here; a Valkyrie.
A guy with wire-rimmed glasses in his early twenties;
congenial, but serious; he had studied engineering.
A girl; stylish, extroverted;
loved Faulkner; engaged to be married.
A sensitive, thirty-ish woman; recently divorced;
her ex had stuck her with a mountain of credit card debt.
And you, in a pink dress.
No jewelry, not much makeup.
Nice figure.
Very simple, very pretty.
A wonderful smile.
Obviously bright.
You had gone here as an undergraduate.
You had taught school in Iowa for several years
and now were back to get a Library degree.
You had grown up on a farm.
You were eminently lovable.
You were, amazingly, unmarried.

I felt that I was at an art exhibition in nineteenth century France.
Here was Raffaelli's "Boulevard of the Italians"
which had sold for 500 francs.
Over here Lecomte de Nouy's "Ramses in His Harem"
which had brought 1900.
And over here in the corner, neglected,
Van Gogh's, "The Artist's Room at Arles".
I felt like shouting,
"My friends, can't you see the beauty of this painting:
its simplicity and purity, its energy; the symphony of its colors!
You have opted for these smooth, conventional paintings
and left this one, the most valuable of all, unsold. . . ."

I felt like hugging you, right then and there.

You were number two or three on my all-time "instant attraction" list.
But I was wary -- so many others had not worked out, why would you?

Our first date was a "Streetcar Named Desire".
I put my arm around you during the play and held your hand as we walked back    toward your apartment.
I invited you to "Bubby and Zadie's" cafe. You refused and offered no alternative.
I was devastated. So this, too, would come to nothing.
We would walk the three blocks back to your apartment.  We would say    goodnight.
I would go home and cry. That would be that.

But when we arrived, my hopes soared: you invited me up to your apartment. You really just didn't like Bubby and Zadie's -- and you liked and trusted me well enough that the intimacy of your apartment didn't seem inappropriate. We talked for a long time and kissed. When I left, all traces of wariness were gone. The coming weeks would not be ordinary.

Garden Parkway YMCA
Dallas, Texas
22 November 1963

Darling Sophie,

Could it be only two months since I let your fingers slip from my hand as that train departed Voronezh station? I fear that this trip was a great mistake. . . .

The boat sailed from Sevastopol as scheduled. Just two days and we were through the Bosporus/Dardanelles and into the incredibly blue Aegean and the Mediterranean. On September 27 we passed Gibraltar and started the long haul across the Atlantic. The work was not demanding though the ship was quite ***** and not really very pleasant.

We docked at Houston in the state of Texas on October 9. Defecting was surprisingly easy. There was supposed to be work in Dallas so I walked/hitch-hiked here last month. But I have not been able to find any work.

The people here, though friendly, are coarse and brash. The stores overflow with televisions, record players, mink coats, but there are many very poor people here too...

The great American leader, Kennedy, was shot and killed today, driving in his open-topped car along the streets of this very city.

My money is gone; my strength, exhausted. How blithely I left you and Russia behind! I feel my lips brushing the tiny hairs on the back of your neck, your ******* swelling. . . . Sophie! May you know great happiness and love! I only ask that in the spring when you visit Krymskaya Pond, that you remember how we knelt there, how I whispered in your ear there, when the air is filled with the scent of its cherry trees that you remember what we felt there. . . .

  Yours, always,    Nickolay

You don't really need me, do you?

Oh, you enjoy being with me.
You enjoy kissing me.
You enjoy having me at your side.
You enjoy playing the games that lovers play.
Perhaps you love me.
But you don't really need me, do you?
What I mean is
you don't lie awake at night thinking of me
you don't leave your homework unfinished because
your mind is tormented by the thought of Lucius
you don't go to sleep at night wishing my arms were around you.

You have your friends.
You have your home.
You have your mother and your father.
You've never been really lonely.
You've never really suffered.
You've never wanted to drive your car off a cliff or
put a bullet through your head.
You've never ached with all your heart.
You've never wanted anyone completely and forever.

But don't feel bad.
It's not your fault.
I should have known.

You will say it was quite unintentional,
this leaving the building without saying good-bye.
("Can't I depart, just once,
thinking only of daisies and chocolate pudding?...")

There are in this world enchanters and enchantees.
It's only the latter whose hearts are chained to heavy
    stones,
who could no more leave a room, forgetting you,
than they could, for several minutes, forget to breathe.

How lightly a goddess walks the earth,
evoking smiles in everyone,
but, still, you break our hearts--
like tigers stepping on sparrows' eggs,
like a deer, walking silently through a strand of spiders'
    silk,
taut between trees,
you break our hearts.