Now I feel nothing but her stream awaythe way she does, dead slow and fast as lightlike a galaxy that leaves behind one sparktoo low and dull to catch her silent drift;though somewhere out there in my turning darkthey know each sunrise falling like a liftand white curve of her arm gone from the night.… Continue reading Don Paterson
A rose pinnedto my shirt like a throbbing ear, an earlistening to the wreckage scraping atthe bottom of your words. — C.T. Salazar, from “[This is my box of twilight and inside],” American Cavewall Sonnets (Bull City Press, 2021)
This is my box of twilight and insideflickers everything that disappeared whenwe weren’t looking, — C.T. Salazar, from “[This is my box of twilight and inside],” American Cavewall Sonnets (Bull City Press, 2021)
I hunger for your sleek laugh, / your hands the color of a savage harvest, / hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails, / I want to eat your skin like a whole almond. — Pablo Neruda, from “Sonnet XI,” 100 Love Sonnets (University of Texas Press; Reissue edition, June 1, 1986) Originally published… Continue reading Pablo Neruda
Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter—In sleep a king, but waking no such matter. — William Shakespeare, from “Sonnet 87,” The Complete Sonnets and Poems (Oxford University Press, 2008)
The Sonnets: XLI banging around in a cigarette she isn’t “in love”my dream a drink with Ira Hayes we discuss the code of the westmy hands make love to my body when my arms are around youyou never tell me your nameand I am forced to write “belly” when I mean “love”Au revoir, scene!I waken,… Continue reading Ted Berrigan
…your smile more enduring, when it illuminates your sorrow. — Rainer Maria Rilke, The Sonnets To Orpheus. (W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition April 17, 2006) Originally published 1922.
I shall be gone to what I understand,And happier than I ever was before.The love that stood a moment in your eyes,The words that lay a moment on your tongue,Are one with all that in a moment dies,A little under-said and over-sung.But I shall find the sullen rocks and skiesUnchanged from what they were when… Continue reading Edna St. Vincent Millay
Breath, you invisible poem!Steady, sheer exchange between the cosmosand our being. Counterpoisein which I rhythmically become […] You, air, still full of places once mine,do you know me? You oncemy words’ sphere, leaf, and smooth rind. —Rainer Maria Rilke, first and last strophes to “Sonnet 1,” The Sonnets to Orpheus: Second Series, from Duino Elegies… Continue reading Rainer Maria Rilke
Be ahead of all parting, as though it already werebehind you, like the winter that has just gone by.For among these winters there is one so endlessly winterthat only by wintering through it all will your heart survive. — Rainer Maria Rilke, from “XIII,” The Sonnets to Orpheus. (W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition… Continue reading Rainer Maria Rilke
The Vale of Soul-Making 