" One fellow said he was raised in a church that taught
wearing yellow and black together was an important sin.
It got me thinking of the failed denomination
I was part of: that old false dream of woman.
I believed it was a triumph to have access to their mystery.
To see the hidden hair, to feel my spirit topple over,
to lie together in the afternoon while it rained
all the way to Indonesia. I had crazy ideas of what it was.
Like being in a dark woods at night
when an invisible figure crosses the still snow,
making a sound like some other planet’s machinery.

— Jack Gilbert, from “Sects,” Collected Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 2012) "

― Jack Gilbert , Collected Poems