"Love. Warmth."
1) "And so it seems I have come round at last." Pencil, draft paper, one sketch.
3) "9 Dec. To my relief, the voyages has become A metaphor." Pencil, draft paper.
4) "Fact alone will trace . . . . queer austere severe." Ink, draft paper.
5) "And no involvements. [?] The wind sings." Ink, draft paper. Verso of 4.
6) "To. It is december. The short real days pass." Ink, pencil, draft paper.
7) "'Love.' 'Affirmations of mans spirit." Ink, pencil, draft paper.
8) "You've come around." Ink, pencil, draft paper.
9) "Tomorrow if I am able it's given me to conquer." Pencil, draft paper. Verso of 8.
10) "The pen falls from it." Ink, draft paper. The first line recalls a line from "Time" in Nights and Days, "The pen reels from your hand."
11)"The pen falls from it. And now the long debauch —" Ink, pencil, draft paper.
12) "Ah but the world of forms is with me yet." Ink, draft paper. Verso of a "Class" manuscript.
13) "Affirm it! The white vessel waits." Ink, pencil, draft paper.
14) "Through clouds at last A fist of brilliants pounds on the salt gulf." In, draft paper. Verso of 12.
15) "The [word?] to be lived adventure leaves." Ink, draft paper.
16) "Love. Warmth." Ink, draft paper.
17) "Confusion follows in the wake of waves." Ink, pencil, draft paper.
18) "An Affirmation? . . . through clouds at last." Ink, pencil.
19) "...faced with such constant bickering." Ink, pencil.
20) "Is it the voyage at last without a destination. The love without an object." Pencil, draft paper.
21) "TOILEST. TOILEST, T. S. ELIOT? Sailing to Rio de Janeiro." Ink, draft paper.
22) "Enhance [?] him — pardon? Was there, and if so, when." Ink, pencil, draft paper. One sketch.
23) "Love, one comes round to that at last." Ink, draft paper.
24) "So it appears I have come round at last." Ink, pencil, draft paper. Verso of 22.
25) "OCT 30 . . . Fear for the senses, frivolity in their use Bitterness at their waste, feelings like this." Ink, pencil, draft paper. Three sketches.
26) "Soul, body, body, soul—all [these married] pairs of names." Ink, pencil, draft paper. One sketch.
27) "in the roots of a red tree." Ink, pencil, draft paper. One sketch. Verso of 25.
28) "Love. To put it differently, at last One comes round to." Pencil, draft paper, two sketches.
29) "As in a dream I seem to disembark." Ink, pencil, one sketch.
30) "...faced with such constant bickering." Pencil.
After the prose quotations following the "Postcards" section of "Carnivals," the third section of six and four lines stanzas (with three short lines intervening) begins "Love. Warmth," with the narrator at home in Stonington dreaming of a trip to Rio de Janerio for the carnival. This section contains the largest number of manuscripts. Some show Merrill's cautious approach to writing an "affirmative" poem and writing directly of love. In Manuscripts 25 and 26, Merrill particularly develops his theme of escaping the mind / body and soul / senses dualities. In Manuscript 20 Merrill again uses the phrase "love without an object."
In "An Interview with Donald Sheenan," Merrill said: "the last thing I had to write was the passage at the end of section three beginning 'Love. Warmth.' I had no idea how to write it; I thought I would do it in free verse and made all kinds of beginnings, before the six-line stanza finally evolved. But the moment for which I'm most grateful is in the third of those five stanzas, when it came to me to make the meter trochaic rather than iambic . . . ." (Collected Prose, ed. J. D. McClatchy & Stephen Yenser, NY: Knopf: 54-55.