The Kiss
There is strange, and yet not strange, is the
kiss. It is strange because it mixes stillness
with tragedy, and yet not strange because
there is good reason for it. There is shak-
ing by the hand. That should be enough.
Yet a shaking of hands is not enough to
give vent to all kinds of feeling. The hand
is too hard and too used to doing all things,
with too little feeling, and too far from the
organs of taste and smell, and too far from
the brain, and a length of arm from the heart.
To rub a nose like some, that we think is so
silly, is better, but there is nothing good to
the taste about the nose, only a piece of old
bone pushing out the face, and a nuisance in
winter, but a friend before meals and in the
garden, indeed. With the eyes we can do
nothing, or if we come too near, they go
crossed and everything comes twice to the
sight without good from one or the other.
There is nothing to be done with th ear, so
back we come to the mouth, and we kiss
with the mouth because it is part of the head
and of the organs of taste and smell. It is the
temple of the voice, keeper of the breath and its
giving out, treasurer of tastes and succulences,
and home of the noble tongue. And its portals
are firm, yet soft, with a warmth, of a ripeness,
unlike the rest of the face, rosy, and in women
with a crinkling red tenderness, to the taste not in
compare with the wild strawberry, yet if the
taste of kisses went and strawberries came the
year round, half of joy would be gone from the
world. There is no wonder to me that we kiss,
for when mouth comes to mouth, in all its stillness,
breath joins breath, and taste joins taste, warmth
is enwarmed, and tongues commune in a
soundless language, and those things are said
that cannot find a shape, have a name, or know a
life in the pitiful faults of speech.
--Richard Liewellyn
“How Green Was My Valley”
Aye. Now were talkin',
Marty