By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept

by Elizabeth Smart

But the surety of my love is not dismayed by any eventuality which prudence or pity can conjure up, and in the end all that we can do is to sit at the table over which our hands cross, listening to tunes from the wurlitzer, with love huge and simple between us, and nothing more to be said.

O the water of love that floods everything over, so that there is nothing the eye sees that is not covered in.

‘Love? Stuff and nonsense!’ my mother would say, ‘It’s loyalty and decency and common standards of behaviour that count.’