All the beauty I ever saw before—yes, all of it; none of it abandoned—has turned into an archetypal image lost in the creeping foliage of my brain among thick lianas and the wide mouths of carniverous plants. Sometimes when the moon is full the creature stands in the moon-drenched glades of my dreaming mind and calls to me... As for the look of love, the face of love, long-lashed poetical glances brimming with creative fire—[t]his is the face of the unknown god lurking in blackness beyond the stars; the face that haunted evenings and dark nights of secret assignations, ecstatic couplings. The face I never found, the one to which the others only lead.
"Gazing," Constantine Cavafy
[Damen Avenue above Thomas Street]
