Sleep If sleep is truce, as it is sometimes said,a pure time for the mind to rest and heal,why, when they suddenly wake you, do you feelthat they have stolen everything you had? Why is it so sad to be awake at dawn?It strips us of a gift so strange, so deep,it can be remembered… Continue reading Jorge Luis BorgesJorg
Who will you be tonight, in the dark thrallof sleep, when you have slipped across its wall? — Jorge Luis Borges, Poetry (June 1993)
A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face. —… Continue reading Jorge Luis Borges
If dreaming really were a kind of truce(as people claim), a sheer repose of mind,why then if you should waken up abruptly,do you feel that something has been stolen from you?Why should it be so sad, the early morning?It robs us of an inconceivable gift,so intimate it is only knowablein a trance which the nightwatch… Continue reading Jorge Luis Borges
But don’t speak of gardens. Don’t speak of the moon. Don’t speak of roses or the sea. Speak of what you know. Speak of the thing that rings in the marrow, that plays in your eyes with shadow and light. Speak of the endless ache in your bones. Speak of vertigo. Speak of respiration and… Continue reading Alejandra Pizarnik
Days when a distant word takes hold of me. I gothrough those days, sleepwalking and transparent.The beautiful wind-up doll sings to herself, charmsherself, tells herself stuff and stories: a nest madeof stiff thread where I dance and lament myselfat my countless funerals. (She is her own blazingmirror, her spare for the cold bonfires, her mysticalelement,… Continue reading Alejandra Pizarnik
If we knew the pointwhere something is going to break,where the thread of kisses will be cut,where a look will no longer meet another,where the heart will leap toward another place,we could put another point on that pointor at least go with it to its breaking. — Roberto Juarroz, from “7,” Vertical Poetry Vol 4.… Continue reading Roberto Juarroz
Melancholia is, I believe, a musical problem: a dissonance, a change in rhythm. While on the outside everything happens with the vertiginous rhythm of a cataract, on the inside is the exhausted adagio of drops of water falling from time to tired time. For this reason the outside, seen from the melancholic inside, appears absurd… Continue reading Alejandra Pizarnik
Being with you or without youis how I measure my time. — Jorge Luis Borges, from “The Threatened One,” The Gold of the Tiger, trans. Alastair Reid (Dutton, 1977)
There are pains that have lost their memory and don’t remember why they are painful. — Antonio Porchia, Voices. (Copper Canyon Press; Bilingual edition April 1, 2003) Originally published January 1st 1969. Translated by W.S. Merwin.
The Vale of Soul-Making 