The tremendous gentleness of that moment smothers me under; all through the night it is centaurs hoofed and galloping over my heart; the poison has got into my blood. I can’t tell if this speaks to her family disowning her, or sticking by her through what they felt was a scarlet letter). Not surprisingly, this book, which was first published in 1945, ends up in a lament--with mythical and biblical interpretations. But with the disillusion of everything that I believed I knew or know or thought, comes (this is a constant becoming, and not something that has finished with me yet) everything that I could not possibly have known and a learning and a discovery.

Smart gave birth to 4 of Barker’s children and eventually moved to rural England; the affair had cooled by then, but the two remained friendly. They never married but Elizabeth bore George Barker four children and their relationship provided the impassioned inspiration for one of the most moving and immediate chronicles of a love affair ever written - By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept .Oh, but nonetheless this book has some exqusite(ly stomach-churning) moments, and fascinating vignettes of its time, and led to some great, great lyrics. Eventually they communicated directly and, as a result of Barker's impecunious circumstances, Elizabeth Smart flew both him and his wife from Japan, where he was teaching, to join her in the United States. There is the intensity of love no matter if it is forbidden but at the same time she has to content herself with having stolen moments from the family of the subject of that love. Quizá sea el poder evocador de las estaciones de tren, o la solemnidad de la referencia bíblica, el caso es que ahí estaba esa mujer, sentada en un banco tras despedir a alguien, o después de esperar largamente a quien nunca llegó, dejando correr lágrimas contenidas durante tanto tiempo.

This was all the more frustrating because having read a bit about the background of this story, Smart's correspondence, affair and ensuing relationship with the (initially married) poet George Baker, I was keen to know more.

The stream of our kiss put a waterway around the world, where love like a refugee sailed in the last ship. In 1963 she became literary and associate editor of Queen magazine but subsequently dropped out of the literary scene to live quietly in a remote part of Suffolk.