I wanted to draw that sadness from you
so that you might be revealed
the way a city opens
on a bright landscape
[…]
how often were we here
where only silver shadows stir
only through you I had to deny myself
through you alone I knew I had no harbor
in a burning sea
Breyten Breytenbach, from “in a burning sea,” Windcatcher: New Selected Poems 1964-2006
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007)