come a little further – why be afraid –here’s the earliest star(have you a wish?)touch me,before we perish (believe that not anything which has ever beeninvented can spoil this or this instant)kiss me a little:the airdarkens and is alive –o live with me in the fewness ofthese colours;alone who slightlyalways are beyond the reach of death… Continue reading E.E. Cummings
the wilding convictionthat this is to be said differently thanso. —Paul Celan, from Breathturn into Timestead: The Collected Later Poetry, transl. by Pierre Joris (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014)
[Humanity i love you] Humanity i love youbecause you would rather black the boots ofsuccess than enquire whose soul dangles from hiswatch-chain which would be embarassing for both parties and because youunflinchingly applaud allsongs containing the words country home andmother when sung at the old howard Humanity i love you becausewhen you’re hard up you… Continue reading E.E. Cummings
Humanity, I love youbecause you are perpetuallyputting the secret of lifein your pants and forgetting5it’s there and sitting down on it. — E.E. Cummings, from “Humanity, I Love You,” first published as “La Guerre II” in XLI Poems (The Dial Press, 1925)
PLAYTIME: the windows, they too,read you all that secrecyfrom your whirlsand mirror itin the jelly-eyed beyond[…]strengthenedthe hour stops next to you,you speak,you stand,most firm abovethe parabelized messengersby voiceby matter. —Paul Celan, from Breathturn into Timestead: The Collected Later Poetry, transl. by Pierre Joris (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014)
And the too much of my speaking:heaped up round the littlecrystal dressed in the style of your silence. — Paul Celan, from “Below,” Poetry Magazine December 1971
[you shall above all things be glad and young] you shall above all things be glad and youngFor if you’re young,whatever life you wear it will become you;and if you are gladwhatever’s living will yourself become.Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:i can entirely her only love whose any mystery makes every man’sflesh put space… Continue reading E.E. Cummings
Desire turns us into ghosts. — Octavio Paz, from “A Draft of Shadows,” The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz: 1957-1987 (New Directions, 1987)
I spell out, not words, but stars : — Octavio Paz, “On the Wing(2),” A Tree Within (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1988)
Trees heavy with birds holdthe afternoon up with their hands. — Octavio Paz, from “THE TOMB Of AMIR KHUSRU,” A Tale of Two Gardens (NewDirections, 1997)
The Vale of Soul-Making 