All my dark thoughts laid out in a straight line. An abstract street on which an equally abstract intelligence forever advances, doubting the sound of its own footsteps.
— Charles Simic, “Euclid Avenue,” Unending Blues: Poems (Mariner Books, 1986)
Rumi — The Vale of Soul-Making
Surge like an ocean, don’t scatter yourself like a storm. Life’s waters flow from darkness. Search the darkness, don’t run from it. Night travelers are full of light, and you are, too; don’t leave this companionship.
— Rumi, from “Search the Darkness,” Love Is a Stranger (Shambhala, 2000)
Louis-François Delisse – Qui a dit que je ne reverrais plus… — BEAUTY WILL SAVE THE WORLD
Qui a dit que je ne reverrais plus jamais l’os d’or du soleil rouler dans nos têtes qu’entre mes mains ne pendrait plus la caresse jaune que ta langue ne serait plus jamais ma rame ? le chat soyeux du soir pose ses trois pattes sur l’œil de l’horizon et derrière les croupes et les […]
via Louis-François Delisse – Qui a dit que je ne reverrais plus… — BEAUTY WILL SAVE THE WORLD
on privilege — HA’s Place
the day woke up in a frenzy of skin and blood, all seemingly smeared on my brown face, chiding me for my ignorance of the lasting night, right at the corner of my right eye — my language is my privilege, my middle- class ceiling stays intact, when i write expressions of winds, sands, waters, […]
all our riches — HA’s Place
i spend the exact change (i have left) of simple words, gentle words, neurotic words, hunchbacked words, to have the evening speak and last for some more time — every second of the same quality and ruse as the lingering fragrance of raat ki rani, dreaming dreadful thoughts and foregoing them in a simple parable […]
Memory is each man’s poet-in-residence. — Art of Quotation
“Memory is each man’s poet-in-residence.” – Stanley Kunitz, poet
via “Memory is each man’s poet-in-residence.” — Art of Quotation
Amir Or – Le bureau — BEAUTY WILL SAVE THE WORLD
Je ne suis pas dans le bon monde. Non. Tout n’est qu’yeux – les gens, les murs – même fermés ils sont étrangers, fixés sur mon visage étranger. Sous une lumière de souffre la lampe de lecture rugit sur les pages qui sombrent dans le bureau ; une joue frémit, fermente sous l’oeil ; dans […]
W.S. Merwin – Variation sur un thème — BEAUTY WILL SAVE THE WORLD
Merci après-midi de ma vie en cette fin de saison sans âge merci pour mes fenêtres au-dessus des rivières merci pour le véritable amour que vous m’avez apporté quand il était grand temps et pour les mots qui sortent du silence et me prennent par surprise et m’ont porté à travers le jour clair sans […]
via W.S. Merwin – Variation sur un thème — BEAUTY WILL SAVE THE WORLD
E. E. Cummings — The Vale of Soul-Making
But I come with a dream in my eyes tonight, And I knock with a rose at the hopeless gate of your heart– Open to me! For I will show you the places nobody knows, And, if you like, The perfect places of Sleep. — E. E. Cummings, from “You Are Tired (I Think),” Etcetera: […]
Charles Bukowski — The Vale of Soul-Making
Memory I’ve memorized all the fish in the sea I’ve memorized each opportunity strangled and I remember awakening one morning and finding everything smeared with the color of forgotten love and I’ve memorized that too. I’ve memorized green rooms in St. Louis and New Orleans where I wept because I knew that by myself I […]
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