28 AUGUST 1964, Page 23

If I Had Ever Loved

my mother, or kissed my brother, or married a man who stood for my father; or if I couldn't, or didn't want to, there would still be between us as we carry life, sprawled reading, the never land of knowing the silences that don't touch, the tong grey gaps of over-thinking going to an answerless, motionless, loveless place, and never coming back the same way.

JUDY DANIEL