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'Explanations of Love'

- Carl Sandburg

There is a place where love begins and a place where love ends.
There is a touch of two hands that foils all dictionaries.
There is a look of eyes fierce as a big Bethlehem open-house furnace
or a little green-eyed acetylene torch.
There are single careless bywords portentous as the big bend in the Mississippi River.
Hands, eyes, bywords - out of these love makes battle-grounds and workshops.
There is a pair of shoes love wears and the coming is a mystery.
There is a warning love sends and the cost of it is never written till long afterward.
There are explanations of love in all languages and not one found wiser than this:
There is a place where love begins and a place where love ends - and love asks nothing.

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