By these fallen syllablesseeds of a charred pomegranateI swear to be earth and wind whirlingover your bones — Octavio Paz, from “Wind From All Compass Points,” The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz, 1957-1987. Edited by Eliot Weinberger, Translated byElizabeth Bishop (New Directions April 17, 1991) Originally published 1987.
Her heart became a bird, trapped inside the glass box of her chest, flapping violently into wall after invisible wall, crumpling into a heap of broken hollow-bones on the transparent floor. — K.I. Hope, Hector. (Abolish Publishing; 3.7 edition August 25, 2011) Originally published in 2009.
Between farewell and the absence of farewell,The final mercy and the final loss,The wind and the sudden falling of the wind. — Wallace Stevens, from “Like Decorations in a Nigger Cemetery,” The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. (Alfred A. Knopf; 1st edition June 27, 1954)
Goodbye, my darling whom I am trying to degrade and deprave. How on God’s earth can you possibly love a thing like me? — James Joyce, from a letter to Nora Barnacle, https://adoxoblog.wordpress.com/. “Fμckbird and Jim: James Joyce’s letters to Nora Barnacle.” February 25, 2011.
I will name wilderness the castle which you were,Night your voice, absence your face,And when you fall back into sterile earthI will name nothingness the lightning which bore you. — Yves Bonnefoy, from “True Name,” Selected Poems. (Grossman / Cape, 1968; First Edition edition 1968)
She was looking into my eyes with that way she of looking that made you wonder whether she really saw out of her own eyes. They would look on and on after everyone else’s eyes in the world would have stopped looking. She looked as though there were nothing on earth she would not look… Continue reading Ernest Hemingway
Be near me Be near me now,My tormenter, my love, be near me—At this hour when night comes down,When, having drunk from the gash of sunset, darkness comesWith the balm of musk in its hands, its diamond lancets,When it comes with cries of lamentation, with laughter with songs;Its blue-gray anklets of pain clinking with every… Continue reading Faiz Ahmed Faiz
Our desires cut across one another, and in this confused existence it is rare for happiness to coincide with the desire that clamoured for it. — Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time Volume 2: In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower or Within a Budding Grave (Penguin Classics; Reprint edition January 25, 2005)… Continue reading Marcel Proust
I want love or death, I want to be totally dead,I want to turn into you, your blood, that roaring, confined lavathat sends our fingertips out, like water,so it can feel the beautiful edges of life. — Vicente Aleixandre , from “Wholeness Within Her,” A Longing for the Light: Selected Poems of Vicente Aleixandre. (American… Continue reading Vicente Aleixandre
All men see fires, storms, explosions, or landscapes; but how many feel the flames, the lightnings, the whirlwinds, or the harmony? How many have an inner beauty that tinges their melancholy? For the indifferent, to whom nature offers an insipid and cold objectivity, life even when fully enjoyed is a sum of missed opportunities. — Emil… Continue reading Emil M. Ciora
The Vale of Soul-Making 