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Dear Gabriel Lidman.
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We are gathered here on behalf
of the students and youth
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to honor you as the great
poet of love.
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Most young people today have
been raised by parents
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who were married in church
and lived an ordinary life,
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a life having nothing
to do with love.
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These past generations' idea
of sexuality
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as something sordid
and simple,
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has always been foreign to you.
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Their doctrine of love
is that true love
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is only thinkable with a union
of heart and mind.
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Your hymns to love describe
two people completely devoted
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to each other in a love-giving
and intimate life
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together, in perfect warmth
and tenderness.
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Let me cite the following lines:
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''He held fast to her mouth,
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''still deeper they sank
into each other.
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''He felt as if he were
on a journey in space
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''in the white moonlight,
a red star, first faint
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''and about to end,
then stronger and closer.
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''lt grew and enlarged into
a flaming well of fire.
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''He burned without pain
and the flames
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''swallowed his tongue
like sour wine.''
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ln erotic ecstasy, people find
infinity and eternity.