BR TO GAMEL BRENAN, [SEPT. 1945?]
BRACERS 51531. AL(X). New York Public Library
Proofread by K. Blackwell

From the first I have loved your strange eyes, expressing a kind of gentle mockery and the wisdom of old pain assimilated. Then I noticed the loving kindness expressed in all your movements. Very soon I saw that, like me, you live in an alien world, whose manners and customs and assumptions are not what seem deeply natural to you. This has caused us both to have a secret inner life of memory — memory of people and places we have loved, the people dead or estranged, the places deprived of their ancient beauty. Those with whom we associate, even in apparent intimacy, cannot share this secret life, and are even likely to be jealous of it. And so I came to look to you for a companionship I had no longer hoped to find. Your silences said more to me than the words of the most eloquent and explicit. Gradually your beauty invaded my inmost being. I feel it as I feel the night wind in willows, or the note of distant curlews on a lonely moor. I feel no longer alone, no longer dusty, for your existence sheds enchantment even over this arid world.