Descending Sweetly

Once upon a time, I descended into a reckless romance with a man committed to another. He described this woman as his Significant Other, abbreviated SO. Nothing between us breached the pleasures of flesh, but disconnecting from our three-month marathon of teasing- stimulating words, arousing paragraphs, and unfulfilled promises- beckoned for a descent that I now understand as opening spaces inhabited by creativity and light.


The Descent
William Carlos Williams

The descent beckons
          as the ascent beckoned.             
                           Memory is a kind  
of accomplishment,                      
          a sort of renewal
                           even
an initiation, since the spaces it opens are new places
          inhabited by hordes
                           heretofore unrealized,
of new kinds—
          since their movements
                           are toward new objectives
(even though formerly they were abandoned).


No defeat is made up entirely of defeat—since
the world it opens is always a place
          formerly
                           unsuspected. A
world lost,
          a world unsuspected,
                           beckons to new places
and no whiteness (lost) is so white as the memory
of whiteness.


With evening, love wakens
          though its shadows
                           which are alive by reason
of the sun shining—
          grow sleepy now and drop away
                           from desire.


Love without shadows stirs now
          beginning to awaken
                           as night
advances.


The descent
          made up of despairs
                           and without accomplishment
realizes a new awakening:
                           which is a reversal
of despair.
          For what we cannot accomplish, what
is denied to love,
          what we have lost in the anticipation—
                           a descent follows,
endless and indestructible.