the flesh is sad

This month's Harper's publishes an extraordinary essay by Roberto Bolaño on literature and terminal illness, which made me want to read not only more Bolaño but more French poetry as well  (what Baudelaire should I read? what Rimbaud?). On the line by  Mallarmé, "The flesh is sad—and I've read every book":

Books are finite, sexual encounters are finite, but the desire to read and to fuck are infinite; it surpasses our own deaths, our fears, our hopes for peace.

Amen.