Above the ground, through the air, in the full moon’s light, like a lily’s stem, bending over incessantly, it adds on hyacinths, lilies, narcissi. The wolves draw back at the sight of it; the lambs get down on their knees, crazy with love and fear. It moves on like an errant candelabra, a bonfire; it… Continue reading Marosa Di Giorgio
My eyes grew old peering into the distance,Till finally they believed me that lifeWas an imaginary colour upon the face of a dream. —Sohrab Sepehri, from “Ruin” Sohrab Sepehri: A selection of poems from The Eight Books. Balboa Press, 2013
I’ve had friends that couldn’t be my lover. I’ve had lovers who couldn’t be my friend. I can’t wait for the day I find the person that is both. — William Chapman
Sometimes it seems that all our words, even those for love,are written in another language. And yet they still arrive,distant, full of their own silences which may be whatallows us to invent another story, what saves us. What isthe word for the kind of love the woman shows now?A word that contains the whole story… Continue reading Richard Jackson
He’s freed from his loneliness by the word. Isn’t that the point of poetry? Breaking through the walls of solitude. Poetry is the great S.O.S. of loneliness. — Anna Kamieńska, from “Industrious Amazement: A Notebook,” Poetry; Mar2011, Vol. 197 Issue 6, p503
I feel her presence in the common day,In that slow dark that widens every eye.She moves as water moves, and comes to me,Stayed by what was, and pulled by what would be. —Theodore Roethke, from “She,” Words for the Wind: The Collected Verse of Theodore Roethke (Doubleday, 1958)
Every time you wish the sky was something happening to your heart, you lose twice. — Olena Kalytiak Davis, from “A Few Words For The Visitor In The Parlor,” And Her Soul Out of Nothing (University of Wisconsin Press, 1997)
I am inhabited by a cry.Nightly it flaps outLooking, with its hooks, for something to love.I am terrified by this dark thingThat sleeps in me;All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity. — Sylvia Plath, from “Elm,” Ariel. (Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Reprint edition February 3, 1999) Originally published 1965.
I hope that one day you will have the experience of doing something you do not understand for someone you love. ― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Published by Houghton Mifflin 1 April 2005 (1st edition)
Sad Steps Groping back to bed after a pissI part thick curtains, and am startled by The rapid clouds, the moon’s cleanliness. Four o’clock: wedge-shadowed gardens lie Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky. There’s something laughable about this, The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart (Stone-coloured light… Continue reading Philip Larkin
The Vale of Soul-Making 