One summer when he was still young he stood at the window 
and wondered where they had gone, those women who sat by the 
ocean, watching, waiting for something that would never arrive, 
the wind light against their skin, sending loose strands of hair 
across their lips. From what season had they fallen, from what 
idea of grace had they strayed? It was long since he had seen them 
in their lonely splendor, heavy in their idleness, enacting the sad 
story of hope abandoned. This was the summer he wandered out 
into the miraculous night, into the sea of dark, as if for the first 
time, to shed his own light, but what he shed was the dark, what 
he found was the night.