I feel as if I should talk about the war. And I have been -- and I will -- but for now I wanted to say -- however incongruous (to put it mildly) it seems to speak of this now, in New York City, with CNN on every television set in every corner of the university every day -- I want to say to you: I didn't think I'd find a safe place in this city. You bring me back to words and music and laughter. To hope. Not to peace -- or perhaps a kind of peace, a delicate balancing of -- restlessnesses? of all my demons. Peace not as the dry and arid place I thought it might be, but something else, something more. A safe place. A place for love. I'm writing this now with your words and your music still in my mind, writing this -- as I have been living, these few days, these few weeks -- with a sense of amazement. The possibility of happiness is an immense thing. You bring me a breath of hope. I wrote to a friend, who said would you not want something to hold on to, at the end -- wrote with 5 a.m. lucidity that if we end this with friendship and hope -- and poetry and music -- then what more can one ask for?

Addendum: it's not that you learn that you will not -- might not -- be hurt. It's that you learn that although there is no-one you love who will not hurt you at some point, betray you at some point -- and you them -- precisely because you love each other. What you learn is not to be afraid of that. To give and hazard all, as Shakespeare says. Throw away the lights, the definitions / And say of what you see in the dark. Not to fear the darkness. You learn to be alone, and to trust yourself -- and then to trust others, despite, because. To face the possibility of betrayal -- of betraying and of being betrayed -- and not to flinch. I know you'll break my heart, if not now then at the end, which is a matter of weeks rather than months. I said -- it seems a long time ago now -- that I'd rather be the more loving one (-- 'If equal affection cannot be / Let the more loving one be me.' Have you forgotten your Auden?). I'm here anyway, beyond my own expectations, beyond my own imagining.