SUNDAY READING | CLEA BY LAWRENCE DURRELL

I am hunting for metaphors which might convey something of the piercing happiness too seldom granted to those who love; but words, which were first invented against despair, are too crude to mirror the properties of something so profoundly at peace with itself, at one with itself. Words are the mirrors of our discontents merely; they contain all the huge unhatched eggs of the world's sorrows. Unless perhaps it were simpler to repeat under one's breath some lines torn from a Greek poem, written once in the shadow of a sail, on a thirsty promontory in Byzantium. Something like...

black bread, clear water, blue air.
Calm throat incomparably fair.
mind folded upon mind
eyes softly closed on eyes.
lashes a-tremble, bodies bare.

but they english badly; and unless one hears them in Greek falling softly, word by word, from a mouth made private and familiar by the bruised endearments of spent kisses [...]

/ CLEA, from the alexandria quartet BY LAWRENCE DURRELL