252.

by what is closest to us, we are touched so little by people, animals,
happenings which don't involve us directly. Death is little more than
an absence; something, someone is taken away; death is separation. And
now you are reminded of ferocity—usually so remote. Biralo's name was
the one most often heard . . . a pleasure cut short.

The dead cat will be found
And buried like the bone of lust
By children who never mourned before.

Enter Henry James, in top hat.

Henry James, what have you to say to me tonight. You're my book
of I Ching. The first sentence I read, taking up where I left off in
*A Small Boy and Others*, what will it be?

He made all life for the hour a foreground, and one that we none
of us would have quitted for a moment while he was there.

Let this be Biralo's epitaph.

His charming latent agility, which any motion showed . . . Biralo?
Krishna? They too. But the lines refer to Gus Barker, Henry James's cousin,
killed in the Civil War, 1863. And which of my Southern ancestors fired
the fatal shot?

Krishna's being a student now as well as my steward gives him an
added dimension and otpimism—he's certainly treated as a son (when I see
how Pasang is made to work for his family, with so little reward aside
from school). . . . Love without sex. I shan't demand sexual participation—
nor would a mere 'demand' work—if he doesn't want to, he's not going to.

253.

Our entire lives are the
Working out of omens. If
We could see them.

Neither Pasang nor Nico cared a hang when they heard about Biralo's
demise, Nico saying I could find another cat, and Pasang saying, 'I told
you I don't like cats.'

...almost holding his breath for the charm and accepted peace of it.

Dear reader, do I ever think of you? Not so consciously and
consistently as dear Henry used to, ever 'on stage,' ever entertaining
that other person, the ideal listener (who was, ultimately, himself).

'Is folks allowed here?'

Comet Kohoutek sighted but not by me.

Shall I get me a little nook in the country and communicate with my
<u>living kind</u>—not my talking kind—by life only. . .? That's what I've
done! Pages of the days, turned by an invisible hand. He knows I love
him and he responds as best he can, as he deems best. His judgment is
sound: it's not with orgasms that he should repay my love. From youth to
age, one world goes, you find another. The calm of the Orientals after the
excitability of the Mediterraneans is a blessing. I can't conceive of any
Sun's seeming more pleasant. Buzz writes: 'I think there is no reason for
you to avoid Crete for so long. There is not any danger for you to come
back.' We are going, I told Krishna and he said, 'When?' I am not asking
more from Krishna than he can give, for he's giving it every day. How
ignoble it would be to try to make sex a condition of his coming along.

254.

This morning's the clearest winter morning we've had—no fog, the horizon, from where the sun will shine in a few minutes, a tender pink. Govinda's lips are a lush deep pink, tender too! But he's got to go—his food consumption is enormous (a growing boy). Biralo gone, Govinda gone, we'll be alone together, have no beings but ourselves to devote ourselves to. (There's been a division of interest, if not downright distraction.) Wonderful as Krishna is, I can make him more wonderful, for better or for worse—he'll not be the same, no one ever has been, after living with me and being loved by me.

I'll bicycle to Sylvia's and propose Govinda—she needs a houseboy, she always does, she yells at them and they leave.

If and when we sleep in the same bed, what will be more natural than to do what we've done before. So I'm still dreaming . . . essence of the hour.

So many things not
Meant to be. One treasures the
Meant-to-be truly.

I never saw a smaller nose in relation to a bigger mouth than that possessed by cowherd Vishnu. Krishna comes up, wearing his Levi jacket on his head.

I found him atop his bed entirely wrapped in the mattress cover, a pattern of bright autumn leaves and flowers on a background of black.

He smiled his infectious smile. Everything to please me!—with the exception of one thing, but that's not the One Thing I require most. What I most require is what he's giving me. Save sex for Paris! Yes? I'm attached and he's attached and that's what it's all about—if it were