Floating Our canoe idles in the idling current Of the tree and vine and rush enclosed Backwater of a torpid midwestern stream; Revolves slowly, and lodges in the glutted Waterlilies. We are tired of paddling. All afternoon we have climbed the weak current, Up dim meanders, through woods and pastures, Past muddy fords where the… Continue reading Kenneth Rexroth
There are the girls we love, the men we look up to, the tenderness, the friendships, the opportunities, the pleasures! But the fact remains that you must touch your reward with clean hands, lest it turn to dead leaves, to thorns, in your grasp. ― Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim. (Broadview Press, November 7, 2000) Originally… Continue reading Joseph Conrad
All night while the rain fell the dark valley heard in silence the silent valley did not remember you were asleep beside me while the rain fell all around us I listened to you breathing I wanted to remember the sound of your breath but we lay there forgetting asleep and awake forgetting a breath… Continue reading W.S. Merwin
[W]e are all as full of echoes as a rocky wood–echoes of the past, reflex echoes of the future, and echoes of the soil (these last reverberating through our filmiest dreams, like the sound of thunder in a blossoming orchard). — Mary Gladys Webb, Gone to Earth (Constable, 1917)
There is a song the body sings to itself about time’s arrow, that has pierced Its sentimental shining heart: about the eternal flow of fire over the medulla oblongata, And the oceanic backwash of lymph in the cells’ interstices. Call that song an angel. Call it space. The body sings, and does… Continue reading T. R. Hummer
This sense of my own weakness and emptiness comforts me. I feel myself a mere speck of dust lost in space, yet I am part of that endless grandeur which envelopes me. I could never see why that should be cause for despair, since there could very well be nothing at all behind the black… Continue reading Gustave Flaubert
Moon! Crown of an immense head, which you keep shedding in golden shadows! Red crown of a Jesus who thinks tragically sweet of emeralds! Moon! Maddened celestial heart —why are you rowing like this, inside the cup full of blue wine, toward the west, such a defeated and aching stern? Moon! And by flying off… Continue reading César Vallejo
I ached all over for her; I leaned my head in her beautiful hair. Her little shoulders drove me mad; I hugged her and hugged her. And she loved it. ‘I love love,’ she said, closing her eyes. I promised her beautiful love. I gloated over her. Our stories were told; we subsided into silence… Continue reading Jack Kerouac
Pale sunlight, pale the wall. Love moves away. The light changes. I need more grace than I thought. —Rumi, from The Essential Rumi. Trans. Coleman Barks. HarperSanFrancisco (1994).
I am the beast with a contorted grin, contracting down to illusion and dilating toward infinity, both growing and dying, delightfully suspended between hope for nothing and despair of everything, brought up among perfumes and poisons, consumed with love and hatred, killed by lights and shadows. My symbol is death of light and the flame… Continue reading Emil M. Cioran
The Vale of Soul-Making 