Nine stages towards Knowing
Why
do
we
lie
’Why
do
we
lie,’
she
questioned,
her
warm
eyes
on
the
grey
Autumn
wind
and
its
coursing,
’all
afternoon
wasted
in
bed
like
this?’
’Because
we
cannot
lie
all
night
together.’
’Yes,’
she
said,
satisfied
at
my
reasoning,
but
going
on
to
search
her
cruel
mind
for
better
excuses
to
leave
my
narrow
bed.
Too
many
flesh
suppers
Abstracted
in
art,
in
architecture,
in
scholars’
detail;
absorbed
by
music,
by
minutiae,
by
sad
trivia;
all
to
efface
her,
whom
I
can
forget
no
more
than
breathing.
Theatregoer
Somewhere
some
nights
she
sees
curtains
rise
on
those
rites
we
also
knew
and
felt
I
sit
here
desolate
in
spite
of
company
Love
is
between
people
And
should
she
die?
And
should
she
die
tonight,
with
this
three
years’
difference
as
well
between
us
now?
Or
no,
be
maimed
perhaps
and
bearing
pain,
to
live
on
damages
for
life?
In
any
case,
I
wish
her
no
good,
whom
I
loved
as
Brunel
loved
iron.
All
this
Sunday
long
All
this
Sunday
long
it
has
snowed,
and
I
weighted
with
the
old
grief
struggling
to
unseat
her
from
my
mind.
Yet
winnowing
our
past
I
cannot
find
a
snow-gilded
scene
however
brief:
thus
do
I
wilfully
increase
my
load.
Spatial
Definition
Razed
the
room
in
which
we
made
so
much
love:
I
try
to
re-place
it
in
space
against
the
windracked
planetrees:
my
eyes
quarter
air.
Able
at
last
’Able
at
last,’
she
writes,
’to
see
things
as
they
were,
I
wonder
we
were
so
blind
to
think
our
trust
could
bind
instead
of
just
defer.’
I
shudder
at
her
fall,
for
that
was,
from
the
heights,
not
how
it
was
at
all.
Arrived
at
the
place
Arrived
at
the
place
to
which
I
always
said
I
was
going:
comfortless
for
lack
of
her
who
chose
not
to
travel
with
me:
too
aware
of
my
way
to
wherever
next
is
also
alone.
Knowledge
Knowledge
of
her
was
earned
like
miners’
pay:
afterwards
I
sought
friends’
knowledge
of
her:
now
I
need
to
know
nothing
of
this
girl:
she
whom
once
I
knew
as
my
tongue
my
mouth.
Ben Jonson
Ben Jonson (born June 11?, 1572, London, England—died August 6, 1637, London) English Stuart dramatist, lyric poet, and literary critic. He is generally regarded as the second most important English dramatist, after William Shakespeare, during the reign of James I. Among his major plays are the comedies Every Man in His Humour (1598), Volpone (1605), Epicoene; or, The Silent Woman (1609), The Alchemist (1610), and Bartholomew Fair (1614). Ben Jonson died in Westminster on August 8, 1637. A tremendous crowd of mourners attended his burial at Westminster Abbey. He is regarded as one of the major dramatists and poets of the seventeenth century.