The Rest of Love | The Nation

There is a difference it used to make,

seeing three swans in this versus four in that

quadrant of sky. I am not imagining. It was very large, as its

effects were. Declarations of war, the timing fixed upon for a
sea-departure; or,

about love, a sudden decision not to, to pretend instead to a kind

of choice. It was dramatic, as it should be. Without drama,

what is ritual? I look for omens everywhere, because they are everywhere

to be found. They come to me like strays, like the damaged,

something that could know better, and should, therefore--but does not:

a form of faith, you've said. I call it sacrifice--an instinct for it,
or a habit at first, that

becomes required, the way art can become, eventually, all we have

of what was true. You shouldn't look at me like that. Like one of those
saints

on whom the birds once settled freely.